There’s a new fence in the Australian Alps, and it’s got a lot of people asking questions. Region Canberra reports the fence, which cost about A$187,000, was built to keep feral horses out of 108 hectares of endangered alpine wetland inside Kosciuszko National Park, near a place called Wild Horse Plain, north of Kiandra in New South Wales.
Why a wetland in Australia should matter to you
To put that size in perspective, 108 hectares is about a third of the size of New York’s Central Park. Small, in other words, but apparently worth defending with an electric fence.
The area behind the fence is made up of sphagnum bogs and fens, soggy mats of moss and soil that accumulate over thousands of years, according to Region Canberra. These wetlands soak up water, slowly release it into alpine streams, and their peat layers preserve a natural record of past plants and fires. A government technical report cited in that same report found that these peat-forming bogs are genuinely rare and cover only up to 2.5% of the higher-altitude land inside the park.
Three animals that live nowhere else
This wetland is home to three threatened species: the broad-toothed rat, the northern corroboree frog and the stocky galaxias, Region Canberra noted.
The stocky galaxias is the most vulnerable of the three. According to the NSW Department of Primary Industries, it’s a critically endangered fish, about 3 inches long, and only known from two tiny wild populations, both within the park.
