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New national park proposal to save the Leadbeater's possum

Mark Colvin reported this story on Tuesday, August 13, 2013 18:45:00

MARK COLVIN: The leading expert on Victoria's faunal emblem, the Leadbeater's possum, says the creature faces certain extinction if state and federal governments don't take urgent action.

Professor David Lindenmayer of the ANU (Australian National University) says one thing that's absolutely essential is the creation of a new national park, protected from logging, in the mountain forests east of Melbourne.

The animal's future has also been endangered by the huge bushfires of recent years.

At a public meeting at Healesville last night, Professor Lindenmayer proposed a park from Kinglake through to the Baw Baws, and north-east up to Eildon.

It's one of the conclusions of a paper he's prepared drawing on 30 years of research on the Leadbeater's possum.

When Professor Lindenmayer spoke to me this afternoon, we began with an extract from a Four Corners program featuring him which I filmed in 1991.

(Extract from 1991 Four Corners program)

MARK COLVIN: Meet the Leadbeater's possum, Victoria's faunal emblem. It's already been declared extinct once, at the end of last century, but it was rediscovered in 1961 and became a symbol of the state's pride in its native animals.

DAVID LINDENMAYER: It's a very important animal to me. It's a symbol of attempting to manage our resources sustainably in Australia. It's quite clearly a test case for integrated forestry and wildlife conservation.

(end of Four Corners extract)

MARK COLVIN: So David Lindenmayer, that was you back 22 years ago. How has the situation changed? Has the Leadbeater's possum been conserved in the way that you hoped?

DAVID LINDENMAYER: Thank you Mark, that's a very depressing piece of sound footage to listen to. Unfortunately Leadbeater's possum is definitely on a strong extinction trajectory at the moment.

It is true that Leadbeater's possum remains a test case for ecologically sustainable forest management, but the reality is that the forests of the central highlands of Victoria are in no way being managed in an ecologically sustainable manner.

MARK COLVIN: Just describe what we saw back then in terms of what you were doing, because I remember filming you climbing up ladders into trees, looking at these little nests that they had, and the importance of the old trees in their lives.

DAVID LINDENMAYER: That's true Mark, and we've continued that work to this day. So we're now continuing 30 years of long-term research, and that work has demonstrated over and over the importance of large old growth trees and old growth forest for the conservation of this animal.

Now, as a consequence of a hundred years of over-harvesting and repeated fires, and the fact that logging makes these forests far more fire prone, Leadbeater's possum has been reduced significantly in population and its population is very much on an extinction trajectory.

MARK COLVIN: Now in 1991, as now, people were worried about the economy, they were worried about jobs. Let's have a listen to a little bit more of that Four Corners program.

(Extract from 1991 Four Corners program. Sound of chainsaws)

MARK COLVIN: In recession-battered Victoria, the forests remain a source of revenue and jobs in the logging industry, and the foresters say there's no reason to fear that their activities will harm the Leadbeater's possum.

ROBERT BAIN: What we've got to do is get a balance, so that we maintain that population, even if you have to put in some artificial nesting hollows and things in the meantime but there's no - Leadbeater's possum is one that we're not worried about in the sense that good management will maintain a healthy population of Leadbeater's possum.

(end of Four Corners extract)

MARK COLVIN: Reassuring words there from Robert Bain, who was the representative of the forest industry association. David Lindemayer, what actually happened?

DAVID LINDENMAYER: A 10 years study showed that Leadbeater's possum doesn't use nest boxes.

The last 30 years of work has shown that logging significantly degrades habitats for Leadbeater's possum and makes areas of forest unsuitable for 150 to 200 years. Logging has reduced the amount of old growth forest to less than 1 per cent of the forest cover.

Now that's far worse than anything you would see in Tasmania, and so really what we've seen is a system that's at a state of collapse, possum populations in a state of collapse, and the industry itself is in a state of collapse.

The industry makes a major loss for the Victorian taxpayer and the Australian taxpayer every year. There's a vanishingly small number of jobs in the industry, and at the same time, almost all of the wood that's cut is now paper.

The paper industry is losing large amounts of money, and on all counts - for water supply, for biodiversity, for carbon, for fire, for economics, and for employment, this is a lose, lose, lose outcome.

It's an antiquated industry that needs to be completely restructured while we still have a chance to do that.

MARK COLVIN: Well back in 1991, one of the problems was that the government had guidelines to protect the possum, but it was the government - perhaps another arm of the government - that was cutting down the forest. Let's have a listen to a little bit more.

(Extract from 1991 Four Corners program)

MARK COLVIN: Victoria's own management plan for the Leadbeater's possum says that where there are four or more stag trees to the hectare, you can't have open slather logging known as clear-felling.

The scientist who took us to this site was in no doubt there had been many more stags than that, but still it had been clear-felled.

It's not just the animal the law's supposed to protect. It's the bush it lives in too.

This, on the word of an expert, was classic Leadbeater's possum country, exactly the kind Victoria's law on threatened species is supposed to protect.

(end Four Corners excerpt)

MARK COLVIN: Is that still going on?

DAVID LINDENMAYER: Absolutely, Mark. In many ways what we see now is that areas of suitable habitat for Leadbeater's possum continue to be logged. Those areas remain unsuitable habitat for the following 150 to 200 years.

Furthermore, there's actually been watering down of the legislation, and watering down of the survey protocols for detecting habitat, which means significant areas for this animal are actually degraded by logging in this way.

MARK COLVIN: So what do you want to happen, what do you hope will happen, and what do you think will happen?

DAVID LINDENMAYER: So, what will have to happen, Mark, if we're going to have any hope of conserving Leadbeater's possum but also conserving the Mountain Ash forest in which it lives, is that we're going to have to do three things: establish a significant area of new national park where we take out the key threatening process, which is clear-fell logging. We remove that from the ecosystem in total.

The second thing we have to do is implement very stringent new management prescriptions, and we've written those for the State Government and the Federal Government. We have to implement those new prescriptions outside of that national park where some logging takes place. As part of that process, we're going to have to reduce the size of the industry to about one fifth of what it is now. There's simply too much logging. The way that forest is being logged is inappropriate, the rate of logging is inappropriate, and we have to change that.

The final thing we have to do is we have to have exit packages to take people out of the industry, to take timber workers out of the industry and move them into other things outside of the forest industry or to move them into the plantation sector to provide the feedstock to run the pulp mill at Maryvale for Australian Paper.

It's pretty clear what we have to do. The science is now 30 years in the making, it's very strong. The pathway forward is clear, and if we don't do these things, Leadbeater's possum is going to go extinct, Mountain Ash forest itself is going to collapse, and the industry will also collapse.

MARK COLVIN: David Lindenmayer is professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, at the ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment. He's been studying the Leadbeater's possum for over three decades.

We'll be seeking a substantial response from the Victorian Government in tomorrow's edition of PM.



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  • Leadbeater's possum
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