THERE are possibly 400,000 Australia-wide, roaming deserts and high country.
To conservationists, they are pests, fouling waterholes, destroying native plants, spreading weeds and taking food from indigenous animals.
But some brumbies have become respectable.
To Jan Carter, a musician turned cattle farmer, they are heritage horses that respond to cuddles and carrots.
On 15 hectares outside Bellingen in northern NSW, the Save the Brumbies charity she founded has turned wild horses into show ponies that learn the refined European art of dressage. One gelding, Adam, bows to visitors.
"There are other ways of managing horses than bullets," says Ms Carter, who was inspired to set up a sanctuary after aerial shooting of hundreds of brumbies at Guy Fawkes River National Park nine years ago.
The charity also has a new sanctuary on 556 hectares between Dorrigo and Armidale, where it stands stallions at stud aiming to create a heritage register with bloodlines like thoroughbreds.
"Until our brumbies stand alongside their peers and take their rightful place as a registered breed at agricultural shows, they have little hope of true recognition and value," says a booklet she wrote.
So Sinatra, a 14.2 hands "cremello" stallion with blue eyes, Casanova, a 14.2 hands bay and Macarthur, a 15 hands buckskin, are all offered for service at $300, plus mare-handling fee.
At Bellingen, Ms Carter shows off their "number one foundation mare", Kelli, currently learning the art of switching lead leg mid-canter from a dressage trainer, Megan Hyde.
The mare recently won the champion heritage brumby trophy at Kempsey Show, but the aim is to have the horses accepted at royal shows.
"Part of our project is to get the horse-loving public interested in them because until we get people interested, we will never get the politicians to want to protect them," she said.
In the western two-thirds of Australia and the ACT, numbers are controlled through aerial and ground shooting as well as mustering, trapping and fencing, according to the Invasive Species Council.
In NSW, where aerial shooting is now banned, the National Parks and Wildlife Service traps and musters, and Victoria has a similar policy.
About 170 horses have been captured and removed from NSW reserves over the past two years and more will be caught, a NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change spokeswoman says.
Usually, "low stress stock handling techniques" including lures and portable yards are used. They are quietened and then transported to local horse interest groups for retraining and rehoming, she says.
Since stepping in five years ago to help relocate horses removed from Guy Fawkes park, Ms Carter says she has found new homes for more than 200.
Not all brumbies can be saved, she concedes, but she wants governments to fund some alternative pastures for those that must be moved. Governments should recognise the brumby as the "national horse", just as US Congress in 1971 protected mustangs and burros by law, she argues.
"We are saying that by introducing sustainable management, the horse can be maintained in its natural habitat and we can cut out all this killing."
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