A review into the status of Victoria’s critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum will be completed in September, potentially clearing the way for increased logging in the central highlands just two months before a state election. Source: The Age
The decision threatens to wedge Labor as it fights to keep the Greens at bay in inner Melbourne and prop up regional jobs in the state’s ailing timber industry.
The Turnbull government is reviewing whether the tiny possum is still in imminent danger of extinction, or on the comeback trail in central Victoria’s native forests, after almost half of its habitat was destroyed in the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.
The review was requested last year by the Australian timber industry, which has also been under pressure since Black Saturday to reduce the number of sawlogs it harvests in Victoria’s native forests.
The restrictions led the private owners of the state’s biggest native timber mill in Heyfield to walk away last year, prompting a $62 million buyout by the Andrews government to save the mill’s 250 jobs.
The competing pressure to preserve the habitat of the possum, which is Victoria’s faunal emblem, and protect forestry jobs in regional Victoria, has proved politically difficult for the state government.
The Greens successfully exploited the issue at the Northcote by-election, where they campaigned for the creation of the Great Forest National Park, a giant proposed conservation zone that would effectively spell the end of native logging in the central highlands.
The September completion date of the reassessment of the Leadbeater’s possum’s critically endangered status, just two months before the next state election, could again threaten Labor’s quest to hold onto its marginal inner-city seats.
The industry’s request to review the possum’s status was based on evidence from VicForests, Victoria’s state-owned timber company, that more than 200 new possum colonies had been found in the central highlands.
Each time a possum colony is found, a new logging exclusion zone is created around the spot, reducing the available area VicForests can harvest.
VicForests is the supplier of native sawlogs to the Heyfield timber mill.
Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg last year sought to fast-track the review for completion in March 2018.
Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce also criticised the possum’s high level of protection at the time, arguing it was endangering thousands of forestry jobs.
But it was revealed under questioning in Senate Estimates in Canberra on Monday that the review will not be done until September.
This has also pushed back the completion date of a related Leadbeater’s possum recovery plan until December.
Victorian Greens senator Janet Rice said the decision to delay completion of the recovery plan meant more of the possum’s habitat would be logged, pushing the marsupial closer to extinction.
“In order to give the possum any hope of survival, we need to reduce the pressure on its habitat, yet what we are seeing is more delays to plans to protect it,” Senator Rice said.
The review by the federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee could result in the possum’s status being downgraded from critically endangered to endangered, reducing its level of protection.
Steve Meacher, from environment group Friends of the Leadbeater’s, said the review was “a political attempt to downlist the possum in the hopes of making the forest more available for logging”.
The VicForests colony count has not been peer-reviewed by scientists and, therefore, was not independently verified data, Mr Meacher said.
VicForests declined to comment. The Andrews government said timber supply contracts were a matter for VicForests.
“The timber supply levels offered to ASH were determined independently by Vic‐ Forests, and is the largest possible sawlog allocation which can be made within Vic‐ Forests’ obligations to manage Victoria’s forest resources on a sustainable basis,” a spokesman said.
