Rare discovery in Kosciuszko National Park as NSW rejects Barilaro-era brumby bill

A critically endangered marsupial has been discovered in Kosciuszko National Park for the first time, while the NSW parliament made a historic move to repeal the Barilaro-era laws that protected brumbies in the Snowy Mountains.

Ecologists found a long-footed potoroo in footage from a camera set up to monitor feral cats in the rugged Byadbo area, similar to the groundbreaking discovery of the Leadbeater’s possum earlier this year.

It comes as the ecosystems of Kosciuszko National Park continue to recover after thousands of feral horses were culled since the Minns government took office, against a backdrop of intense campaigning to save the brumbies, including by radio host Ray Hadley.

Under laws passed by the former Coalition government and championed by former Nationals leader John Barilaro, the government must maintain a population of 3000 brumbies in a retention area of the park to preserve colonial heritage.

On Thursday, the NSW lower house including Labor, the Coalition and crossbenchers passed a private members’ bill introduced by independent MP Joe McGirr to repeal this law, though the Nationals flagged they will push amendments in the upper house.

Opposition environment spokesman James Griffin, a Liberal MP from Sydney, said the change in the Coalition stance showed that people were able to change their views based on the evidence, and that they could make a “clear-eyed and pragmatic” decision to repeal the bill.

“Brumby advocates … weren’t necessarily looking at this through the lens of conservation or the environment. They were looking at it through the lens of identity, and that needs to be, whether you agree with it or not, respected,” Griffin said.

“On the other side of the coin, they are an introduced species, and by definition, an invasive species. We don’t offer that protection to feral pigs and other feral animals, so it’s common sense to repeal the bill and let a national park be managed under a consistent piece of law.”

The plan of management preserving 3000 heritage brumbies remains in place, but future decisions about feral horse management in Kosciuszko will revert to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. This is consistent with the approach for other feral animals in the park, as well as wild horses in other national parks such as the Blue Mountains, Barrington Tops and Guy Fawkes River.

Invasive Species Council chief executive Jack Gough said the cross-party support for the repeal sent a clear message that “never again can we have a law on the books that protects a feral animal over our native wildlife”.

“When it comes to feral animal management, the way to do it is you do it once and you do it properly,” Gough said. “Any time we muck around or slow down the process, animals keep breeding, and it means more animals have to be killed and that has welfare consequences.”

Based on the 2024 survey, there are 3000 to 4000 horses in the park, and the 2025 survey is due soon. Gough said it would be impossible to get the feral horse population to zero given that people illegally released horses in the park and there were huge numbers in the state forests.

The potoroo sighting is hundreds of kilometres from any other known population of the animal, which lives in a few pockets in Victoria, mostly in East Gippsland. It is found in just one other place in NSW: Bondi State Forest, in the hinterland of the NSW South Coast, where it was discovered in 2023.

The photos show an individual animal, but they could be evidence of the first population of long-footed potoroos detected in a NSW national park since the early 1990s, when scat was found in the South East Forest National Park, not far from Bondi forest.

The shy, nocturnal animal is critically endangered in NSW and endangered nationally. Professor David Lindenmayer from the Australian National University and the Biodiversity Council said the creature favoured wet, dense forests where it could feed on truffles and hide from predators.

In Kosciuszko alone, there were 690,000 hectares of park, Lindenmayer said, and the combination of better night cameras and strong feral management gave him hope that more potoroos would be found. Additional survey work could also uncover further populations in southern NSW and Victoria, but he said many of the southern forests had been converted to pine plantations.

“That’s why places like Kosciusko are so important,” Lindenmayer said. “Those remnant populations in places like Bondi State Forest are fantastic, but they’re also a real worry because probably 95 per cent of the animals’ previous habitat has been lost because of things like land conversion and land clearing.”

The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water will expand its long-footed potoroo Saving our Species program at Bondi State Forest to Kosciuszko.

Environment Minister Penny Sharpe said in a statement the discovery was “a promising sign” and highlighted the importance of feral species control.

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