STEVE HART: Culling teams have today resumed aerial shooting operations to rein in brumby numbers in Kosciuszko National Park. The latest brumby count estimates between 6,000 and 16,000 feral horses are roaming in the park. Environmental groups saying numbers have exploded following a two year pause on culling …     

– Win News Riverina, 9 June 2026

Hello, I’m Linton Besser, welcome to Media Watch.

And welcome to the return of the brumby wars, with the country’s most tabloid-tabloid embarking on a fresh campaign, not to save Australia’s majestic high-country, but to save those majestic animals destroying it, and bringing out the big guns to help.

BAN FROM SNOWY RIVER

EXCLUSIVE

Acting legend calls cut on ‘barbaric’ cull of brumbies

– The Saturday Telegraph, 13 June 2026

Because who better to offer their expertise than actor Tom Burlinson, the famed Man from Snowy River who had some hard truths for the NSW government:

Burlinson said there was “no way” that the brumbies could be shot “quickly and humanely” from helicopters flying overhead. 

– The Saturday Telegraph, 13 June 2026

His qualifications thus established, the actor had another even more stunning insight:

… during his time filming The Man from Snowy River in Victoria’s high country, he saw that the landscape could support space for brumbies.

– The Saturday Telegraph, 13 June 2026

That’s right, plenty of room, 44 years ago, in another state altogether.

The star’s impassioned defence of the Snowy Mountain brumbies, was but one part however, 

of a Telegraph series which claimed previous aerial culling had created a brumby bloodbath that was ‘cruel and unreliable’ horses left to die with broken limbs.

Nine days ago, the paper’s editor made clear his position:

The wild brumby is an icon of Australia … an untamed symbol of our rough and rugged land.

– The Saturday Telegraph, 13 June 2026

Yes, try if you can to name an animal more Australian than a horse. 

Former shock-jock Ray Hadley saddled up too, taking the Telegraph’s readers into the heart of the conspiracy:

RAY HADLEY: … but why are they intent on doing it? … 

Well here’s the reason. You see, these beautiful Brumbies are a link to our colonial past. A link. 

… So anything to do with our colonial past out the door it goes, including the poor Brumbies down there at Kosciuszko. 

– The Daily Telegraph, 9 June 2026

Over on 2GB, Hadley’s replacement on the wireless was outraged horses were in the cross-hairs and not hogs!

MARK LEVY: All the while you’ve got the feral pigs running around doing their thing … 

We’ve got helicopters up there shooting them? Don’t think so.

– Facebook, 2GB Sydney, 9 June 2026

Only problem Mark, is that’s exactly what we have: the aerial shooting of a range of feral species, including deer, goats, and yes, pigs. Which Mark admitted just five minutes later on air after a phone call with the NSW Government but which didn’t stop his team an hour after he got off air from republishing his clever tirade across social media. 

As the government’s Wild Horse Management Plan sets out, the program is designed to protect some of Australia’s most precious ecosystems where several threatened species are at risk, in particular from feral horses which saw little emphasis over the past two weeks as the Telegraph cleared space for plenty of the anecdotes of those deadset against the cull, brumby protest organisers, the Brumby Alliance, a horse trainer and an unnamed whistleblower who claimed to be involved in a previous and distressing brumby cull but whose role and whose employer was never revealed. Unfortunately however the paper found no room for the findings of the most recent and comprehensive independent review of the aerial culling program undertaken by an independent vet who, having observed three days of shooting, found no evidence of wounded horses and a notable absence of adverse animal welfare events. 

As for this claim from a ballistics expert that:

… if it took an average of seven shots to kill a horse – and up to 15 on occasions – then something was “not working properly”.

– The Daily Telegraph, 10 June 2026

It too was explicitly addressed by a government inquiry back in 2023 a National Parks official explaining: 

… it did not take an average of 7.5 bullets to achieve insensibility or death. Statements to this effect are wrong.

Median time … was 5 seconds …

The purpose of the additional bullets is to provide certainty that the animal is dead … 

– Inquiry Into The Proposed Aerial Shooting Of Brumbies In Kosciuszko National Park, NSW Government Animal Welfare Committee, Answers to Questions on Notice, Hearing: 18 Dec 2023

Which the Telegraph chose not to report. It was also unwilling to print an op-ed proffered by the 

Invasive Species Council, an environmental lobby group, and sent on day two of the Tele’s campaign until last Saturday after we’d asked why the offer had been ignored. 

Meanwhile we heard nought from the paper to that question and several others but a wintry mountain breeze. 

If your only goal is outrage and popularity the Telegraph’s campaign is very nifty. Who likes the idea of horses being shot? But doesn’t a newspaper have any other kind of obligation? 

What about showing the courage because that’s what it takes to make sure readers get the full set of facts even those especially those they might not very much like.