Moves to eradicate the brumbies from the Snowy Mountains where mobs of the wild horses have been seriously trashing the environment for decades led an ABC radio listener last week to recall the ‘Emu Wars’ of the 1930s and later years. Large scale destruction of emus was called for because of the damage the big birds were wreaking on wheat crops in Western Australia. Reportedly 20,000 emus had invaded farming areas. The Army was called for in 1932 and troops, equipped with Lewis machine guns set about reducing the numbers and apparently had some success. Many thousands of rounds were fired off and several thousand emus were killed. Meanwhile, the government’s aim is to reduce brumby numbers from the current estimated 14,000 to 600.
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