Slowly they kill the Heritage of the Man from Snowy River...

Regardless of over 8500 submissions to the Kosciuszko Plan of Management (out of the total of 11000 received) advocating horse riding to be permitted and dispersed back into wider areas to alleviate concentrated impacts, the Director and his POM team of audacious bureaucrats have chosen to stick to the status quo, which is jumping to the demands of radical city green minorities. This demonstrates once more that the whole public consultation process including the Community Forum is a farce not to mention a waste of taxpayers money.

We, the descendants of the original settlers of the Snowy, are being asked to be grateful for retaining the mere 320 acres at the Pinch River. This is the only place that you can ride a horse in Snowy River country ie from north of Adaminaby to Victorian Border, whilst we have lost even further traditional areas in the north, ie Blue Waterholes and Mt Morgan. Less than 10% of 690,000-hectare park (equal to 3 x ACT) is now accessible to riders.

A 20 yr Review of any Plan of Management should take every issue with all park visitors into account that's requested by its submissions and not just what the park deems the appropriate agenda. Wilderness policy is a huge issue and yet any kind of debate on this is always denied by the bureaucracy. Democracy is not asking for submissions when the Plan is already a done deal and the larger majority of submissions are not going to be taken seriously anyway.

What the director fails to mention is that National Parks policies on horse riding particularly, are guided by, no make that written by the left's city green zealots and bureaucrats. Their strategy is to squeeze horse riding into smaller and smaller areas to eventually totally prohibit and a new booking system is consequently the tool to be used. The Director mentions that "some horse camps get over crowded which can have negative impact" this may be true, however any activity which is forced to be used over and over again in one small place is bound to have some kind of impact. Locking it up and further confinement is not good land management though. If a farmer did this he would be found negligent.

Does the director remember back in the good old days "when he was just a parkie" and before wilderness declarations, that these issues and impacts did not even exist?

The Snowy Riders would indeed grasp the new permit/booking system with both hands, but only if horse riding were permitted and dispersed back into wilderness and wider areas (not Alpine) where our families have ridden for over 150 years. Accordingly, this would be a very appropriate and effective management tool for both parties and would greatly alleviate any areas under pressure. Any experienced land manager worth his salt, would just call this common sense. The system as it stands is merely a confinement system to squeeze riders out. This is a stealthy way of using Red Tape and Bureaucracy to destroy the nation's Man from Snowy River heritage.

The pork filled barrels spinning around the Park offices will not disguise the inequity of this government's policies for National Parks. The Director along with the Minister of course has also tried to hide his subterfuge by talking up spending money on horse yards and facilities that are not even required.

In the NPWS horse riding code, Horse riders are asked to supply their own portable fencing so as to continually move and rest paddock areas. In contradistinction, now we will be told to use their static yards that we don't want i.e. more concentrated impact for them to claim!

As for the beat up of the few new toilet facilities at the Pinch River camping area (which yes we do appreciate thankyou), these improvements are only replacing the old fallen down or burnt toilets that had been there for 35 years before hand. Lets be clear, these improvements have been on the board for 15 years and are only now coming to fruition!

If the Minister wants to spend some worthwhile money on its traditional horse riding stakeholders, it should be on monitoring and evaluating a trial of horse riding using traditional packhorse travel, back into wilderness and other areas, where it should never have left. This research kind of trial has never been undertaken, the Snowy Riders were just kicked out overnight without consultation. A proposal like this would ensure more responsible and traditional park users and would lead to significant social improvements with all concerned and all could learn much.

The Minister could also spend taxpayer's money more wisely in wild horse management.

The Snowy Horse Riding community have offered over and over to manage the brumbies population for free as volunteers as we have done for generations. Again the Minister seems to prefer to spend tens of thousands of taxpayers dollars (over $120,000 last year) on paying for and supplying private contractors to carry out this traditional community service. This money would be better spent on wild dogs, pigs and weeds.

A warning to the less initiated, make no mistake, the same radical city greens who write the policies for National Parks want nothing less than total eradication of all horses in all National Parks. This philosophy includes the shooting of brumbies from helicopters and they will stop at nothing. Park Users take heed - These very same people also have on their agenda to close ski resorts too.

Snowy Mountains Horse Riders Assoc.Inc.
www.snowyriders.asn.au
Email contact: heritage@snowy.net.au