Logging should end in Victorian central highlands forests to save the Leadbeater’s possum according to the federal government’s key scientific advisers on threatened species. Sources: The Sydney Morning Herald, ABC News
The call came as the federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt signed off on recommendations that the Leadbeater’s threatened species status should be increased to “critically endangered”, considered one step before extinction.
In making his decision Mr Hunt said the species would now have the highest level of protection under national environment law.
“The challenges facing this iconic species are significant,” Mr Hunt said. “It has undergone very severe population declines in recent decades with numbers having decreased by more than 80% since the mid 1980s.”
Mr Hunt said he would work with the Victorian government to find a solution to save Leadbeater’s, including rewriting a national recovery plan.
The Victorian Government has given its strongest indication yet that it is open to ending clear felling and closing down the hardwood timber industry in key parts of Victoria’s Central Highlands to prevent the extinction of the Leadbeaters Possum.
But Lisa Neville, Victorian Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water has made it clear that she wants the Federal Government to help financially with any bail out.
In its advice on Leadbeater’s, the Threatened Species Scientific Committee – a national panel of conservation scientists that advises Mr Hunt – identified the threats to the species’ survival as fires and timber harvesting in its primary habitat of mountain ash forests.
It finds that under future projected habitat conditions, the decline in the species numbers over the next 18 years was estimated to be over 80%.
The species would also continue to lose numbers in the years following as the Leadbeater’s preferred habitat of big, old trees with hollows in them would further decline until 2060.
“The committee considers the most effective way to prevent further decline and rebuild the population of Leadbeater’s possum is to cease timber harvesting within montane ash forests of the central highlands,” the report concluded.
The advice will embolden advocates for a new national park – which they have dubbed the “Great Forest National Park” – that would encompass the central highlands forests that sit on Melbourne’s north-east fringe, and ultimately mean an end to native forest harvesting in the region.
The state government has so far stopped short of supporting a new park. Instead, it has set up a taskforce to work through issues facing the timber industry.
Chief executive of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries, Tim Johnston, said the primary threat to the Leadbeater’s possum habitat was fire, not forestry.
“In contrast to fire, the footprint of the industry is small, at less than 0.1% of the forest estate harvested each year,” he said.
