In my latest book "The Brumby Wars", I quipped that Kean must be waiting to grow an Afro before the plan was released. It was a line that only one hairless man could write about another, but it wasn’t just a gratuitous baldness joke. It was a comment on the almost comical impossibility of producing a plan that pleases everybody. But Kean has come close. So what’s in it? The first big point is that there will be fewer brumbies. The current number in Kosciuszko, estimated post-Black Summer fires at about 14,000, will be reduced over time to 3,000. This is five times the number of 600 proposed in the 2016 draft plan.

Secondly, the portion of Kosciuszko National Park containing brumbies will be reduced. All horses will be removed from 21 per cent of the park. The 47 per cent of the park that is horse-free will be kept that way. That leaves just 32 per cent of the park for brumbies, in areas where their presence meets the cultural heritage criteria. Thirdly, the range of control methods will be increased. Ground shooting is now back on the table alongside trapping and mustering. So overall, there will be fewer brumbies across a smaller area, and it’ll be easier to get rid of them. That’s a win for the environment. But let’s be very clear: this is also a huge win for brumby supporters.

Three thousand is still an enormous number of horses in a landscape exquisitely ill-equipped to support them. When Kosciuszko land managers first identified the need to control the increasing brumby herds back in the late 1990s, their numbers were estimated at 2000. Barilaro has played the long game to perfection here, shifting the goalposts so that a lot seems like a few.

In an ideal world, there would be no brumbies in the Australian high country. This landscape is unique, beautiful and fragile. We think of mountains as these big, hulking things impervious to damage, but that’s not true. The snowgums are under attack by a native beetle. The big fires are coming more often (a fact which makes a mockery of the brumby advocates’ pseudo-scientific claims that “grazing prevents blazing”). And then there are the imperilled swamps and bogs.

The sphagnum moss of the Australian high country is a miracle of nature. It stores water like a giant sponge, releasing it slowly so that alpine creeks flow swift and clear in the driest summer. Sphagnum bogs are also the favoured nesting sites of the critically endangered corroboree frog. Brumbies trample this delicate ecosystem to worthless mud-heaps. It’s like the Great Barrier Reef’s coral is being devoured by an imported European fish, and everyone’s cheering for the fish.

So why keep any brumbies? Because, as Barilaro recognised, they are special to many people. Some simply love the idea of wild mountain horses. For many it goes deeper. It’s about connection to stories, from Elyne Mitchell’s Silver Brumby books to Banjo Paterson’s poetry. For mountain cattle families, the brumbies are avatars for a lifestyle lost when high country grazing leases were revoked and national parks came into being.

We’re kidding ourselves if we think Kosciuszko is not already a compromised landscape. What about all the magnificent gnarled snow gums cleared for ski runs? Do people who drive dusty utes to Currango Plain in the hope of seeing brumbies deserve less than those who drive sleek, black SUVs to ski at Thredbo?

The subtitle to my book is “the Battle for the soul of Australia” and you’d better believe that’s no slick marketing line. This has long been a culture war over symbols of pre- and post-colonial Australia. Within reason, both sides can have most of what they want now. Matt Kean has made compromise possible. Let’s embrace it.

Anthony Sharwood is an award-winning journalist and the author of The Brumby Wars.

The Age