He had hoped to be photographed mustering wild horses, but the animals weren’t playing along. “They were sitting up there on that ridge,” Mr. Maguire said of the horses, now spooked by the human intrusion. “I’ll run them again.”Mr. Maguire, a 60-year-old cattleman, is leading a campaign to prevent the Australian authorities from culling the wild horses, known as brumbies. The clash traces some of the country’s biggest fault lines, including its urban-rural divide and the legacy of colonialism. The horses, an invasive species whose populations are booming, must be removed because they are trampling ancient ecosystems in the Australian Alps already hurt by climate change, they say.

Source: New York Times June 28, 2020 16:18 UTC