The 70-year-old is a member of the Friends of Currango group, which has written to the park’s Wild Horse Draft Management Plan project officer Ross Gibbs expressing the group’s disappointment at two aspects of the plan.

The group feels the plan does not go far enough in managing the ecological damage caused by the wild horses in the wetland area of the park.

“Even if they cull 90 per cent of the population, that still leaves 600, which is far too many,” Mr Parkes said.

The group feels the park’s timetable is inadequate and the damage to the Currango region needs “dramatic” action.

“When I started going there the wetlands were full of a diverse array of frogs and other animals,” he said.

He said the once pristine region is suffering from an “exploding” wild horse population.

“Every group you see now has little foals and the smell everywhere you go is the smell of horse manure.”

A keen fisherman, Mr Parkes said trout used to be caught by hand in deep ponds around two metres deep.

“Now the holes are around six inches deep unless there’s a big flood, all the banks have gone and the streams have relocated 300 metres from where they were 20 years ago.”

Mr Parkes said that viewing the wild horses was once a novelty event with stories of encounters being told around the family dinner table on his return from holiday.

“Their behaviour towards humans has changed. Now I have horses follow me, when 25 years ago it would have been a privilege to see a horse.

“You would go home and tell your kids about it and you could never get close enough to them to take a photograph.”

Mr Parkes says he hopes the NSW government will not “backtrack” on the plan.

“I still reckon the plan is not enough,” he said.

“Years ago the horses would ‘bang’ be off in the other direction, now they come up to your car.”

The wild horse cull aims to cut the population of 6000 in half within 5-10 years, and by 90 per cent inside 20 years.