AN Australian state government has decided to legally protect rather than kill thousands of wild horses, infuriating scientists who argue the feral species is doing severe environmental damage to the country’s Snowy Mountains alpine region.

New South Wales deputy premier John Barilaro said his government had struck a balanced response to ecological concerns about the impact of the horses, known as brumbies, on Kosciuszko National Park. A 2016 government report had recommended that 90% of the park’s 6000 brumbies be killed, reducing the herd to 600 in the 2,700 square miles of mountainous wilderness that includes Australia’s highest mainland peak, Mount Kosciuszko, and the nation’s most popular ski fields.

Barilaro said legislation will be introduced to state parliament this week that will recognise the heritage value of the brumbies to the park and ban killing them. But brumbies will be relocated from environmentally sensitive areas.

“There is no clear answer. For all the people who are happy today, there’ll be some who won’t be,” Barilaro said.

“The pro-brumby people say it hasn’t gone far enough and of course the conservationists and environmentalists will say this has gone too far. I think we’ve got a balanced approach.”

The brumby’s place in the state’s largest national park, through which the Snowy River flows, is an emotive argument in Australia. The horses have been both a feral pest and an integral part of Australian frontier folklore for almost two centuries.