Brumby cull essential to preserving Kosciuszko National Park

The ACT Parks and Conservation Service has shown that thermal-assisted aerial culling of deer and pigs is the most humane and effective method of reducing numbers of large feral animals in national parks.

The National Parks Association of the ACT has long advocated reducing feral horse numbers in KNP. With the recent explosion in numbers in the park, many of these horses are obviously malnourished through lack of enough feed for them.

Fewer horses will result in a healthier, more stable remaining population and protection for all plants, animals and heritage sites in the park.

Kosciuszko is the jewel in the crown of Australian national parks.

The NSW government must ensure that it remains so by keeping a balance between native and introduced animals. Aerial culling of feral horses will be a good start.

Like many non-native animals brought to Australia and abandoned to fend for themselves in the wild, brumbies are now fully naturalised into ecosystems that have been vastly altered by land clearing, agriculture, development, freshwater source depletion, and the deliberate eradication or exploitation of native animals.

Naturalised animals have picked up the slack from native animals that are no longer present in large enough numbers to contribute the services they evolved here to provide.

Brumbies are hard-hooved, heavy animals, like the cattle and sheep for whom so much of the native landscape has been displaced.

But any damage these horses do is comparatively trivial because there are so few brumbies and so many sheep and cattle.

Like all other wild animals, naturalised animal populations fluctuate with the condition of the environment. If brumby numbers have increased recently, it is because the land to which they have access has increased.

The snowline is rising with climate change and every plant and animal that lives along that snowline must adapt or die.

A rising snowline is good for horses, but many native species will die - not because of the horses but because of the climate change.

Clearly blaming the horses is nothing but another government scapegoating exercise.

In recalling the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War we would do well to remember the social trauma caused to Australia by that conflict.

Like all of the unjust, cruel and pointless battles the USA has dragged this country into since 1945, it created nothing but misery. More than three million people in Vietnam lost their lives. Deaths and injuries continue to this day.

Australia sent 60,000 military including conscripts overseas, more than 500 never returned and thousands who did had horrific physical and metal injuries.

Like all soldiers returning from war they received insufficient support. It should also be remembered that the only reason we got out of Vietnam with so few casualties was because of the hundreds of thousands of Australians who marched in moratoriums protesting conscription and the war, ultimately forcing our withdrawal.

Demonstrating we had learnt little from Vietnam, we had the subsequent murderous disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Now we have entered into AUKUS, another war mongering exercise. We are very slow learners.

I think the response - or lack of response - to the win by the Diamonds in the 2023 Netball World Cup is a national disgrace.

While there was talk of acknowledging the Matildas with a national holiday all the Diamonds have enjoyed has been a minute's silence - or was it longer.

Whatever the celebration, and I think one is deserved, surely it should honour the achievements of both the Diamonds and the Matilda's.

Colin Smeal ("We have a population crisis" Letters, August 18) got the right headline.

Congratulations to The Canberra Times for allowing rapid population growth to be identified as a real and obvious driver of rentals and house purchase price inflation.

Albo et al want us to accept that only the supply side of the demand vs supply relationship will provide a solution. That's partisan, in line with the Business Council's hunger for cheap labour, but deliberately ignorant of growing urban congestion, infrastructure shortfalls, habitat loss and the like.

I picked up a flyer at an ACT library on a community consultation on the development of an Integrated Energy Plan for the ACT.

It was essentially about the electrification of homes, businesses and transport. Submissions and comments are being sought by September 12. However, the plan is misnamed. It should be more accurately described as a "gas transition energy plan".

How can an integrated energy plan be integrated, when it is missing one of the most important contributors to global warming per unit of energy use, namely wood heaters in the ACT?

Burning firewood in domestic wood heaters produces methane and black carbon particles that increase global warming.

Although only 10 per cent of households in Canberra have wood heaters, those that do typically burn three to four tonnes of wood per year. The average wood heater causes more global warming than heating 20 to 50 similar homes with a reverse cycle heat pump.

The significant environmental and health costs of domestic wood heaters in the ACT are missing from the plan.

The actions on housing supply identified at the National Cabinet meeting, although welcome, will only marginally improve affordability.

Governments need to:

Substantive action on tax reform is unlikely given the reluctance of many homeowners to support actions that threaten their speculative capital gains, fears easily exploited by the Coalition.

Wednesday's editorial "The housing crisis will only get worse" (August 16) correctly identifies the urgency of reforms to address our housing crisis and make sure that housing supply keeps up with our growing population.

This requires a multifaceted approach from all levels of government.

At a local level, we need to move from NIMBYism to YIMBYism. We need to enable developments that boost housing supply and make our communities more sustainable, liveable and prosperous.

This means moving beyond generic platitudes about planning "red tape", and instead looking at how local zoning regulations restrict the types of housing and community infrastructure our cities need. Community groups like Greater Canberra, and our interstate sister organisations, Sydney YIMBY and YIMBY Melbourne, are doing just this.

Our Missing Middle Canberra campaign outlines clear, specific changes that would permit more duplexes, townhouses, low-rise apartment blocks and mixed-use buildings in our established suburbs.

Planning reform is now a key component of the national housing policy agenda. Canberrans have a perfect opportunity to show other cities how to implement practical planning reforms that make our city better and more affordable for all.

Michel Doyle, "cherry picking" the constitution is not a good reason to vote against an amendment to the constitution. (Letters, August 16). My 1981 edition of Sawyer's Australian Constitutional Cases has 735 pages analysing 59 cases "cherry picking" the constitution.

King Charles has "agreed" to become Captain-General of the Royal Regiment of Australian Artillery. Who invited him? Why? Does the ADF really need these time-wasting sinecures? And why is that regiment "royal" anyway?

Felicity Chivas (Letters, August 16) is right. "Gotten" is a venerable word which survives in America. But we don't live in the 14th century - and we don't live in America either.

Labor needs to look at reversing the privatisation of employment services and installing a modern, fit-for-purpose version of the Commonwealth Employment Service.

The Anti-Poverty Centre's report has found employment companies making the most profit have the worst results in helping people into jobs. Labor should revive the Commonwealth Employment Service. The unemployed would receive fairer treatment and there would be accountability.

Such was the concern for safety shown by the police and other "authorities" in the airport tarmac drama that hundreds of passengers were for three hours kept confined to a plane.

The priority should have been to offload the passengers quickly.

Enough of the good Canberra that we love has gone without letting everything else be "developed".

Bandwagon space is at a premium when it comes to honouring Australia's wealth of pre-eminent sports heroes. It's hard to justify public holidays for particular achievements.

Fear not Fred Pilcher (Letters, August 16) the gerund survives (alas perhaps only one of them). Apparently no commentator or interviewee on Australian mass media in the last 12 months has learnt a "lesson". No, they have "learnings". Spare us.

Well done Tony Morrissey (Letters, August 17). His reasoning for the "yes" case couldn't have been more comprehensive, yet succinct and clear cut. He completely demolished the utter narrow-mindedness of the "no" case.

The maddest thing happening on the planet right now is Poland sending an additional 10,000 troops to the border with Belarus.