Logging industry wins battle for review into leadbeater’s possum endangered status

EXCLUSIVE: VICTORIA’S faunal emblem, the leadbeater’s possum, will have its critically endangered listing reviewed after a successful push from the logging industry.

The leadbeater’s possum will have its critically endangered listing reviewed after a successful push from the logging industry.

VICTORIA’S faunal emblem will have its critically endangered listing reviewed after a successful push from the logging industry.

The leadbeater’s possum received the highest possible legal protection under national environment law just two years ago.

But the listing for the rare animal — whose numbers in Victoria’s central highlands are thought to have dropped by 80 per cent since the mid-1980s — has hit a hurdle.

The Herald Sun can reveal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has directed the Threatened Species Scientific Committee to fast-track a review of the listing.

Industry group Australian Forest Products Association requested the possum’s status be reviewed in March, citing evidence the possums had been found across a wider habitat range than understood at the time of its listing.

Victoria’s leadbeater’s possum was listed as critically endangered in 2015.

Almost half of the possum’s ideal habitat — the old-growth mountain ash forest in the Central Highlands of Victoria — was burnt in the 2009 bushfires.

It is estimated somewhere between 1500 and 3000 Leadbeater’s possums remain in the wild, but the Department of Environment’s draft recovery plan last year highlighted there was “no

precise and robust estimate” of the total population size.

The data, collated by Victorian government-owned forestry agency VicForests over the past three years, included extensive targeted surveys for the native marsupial.

The move comes after Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce wrote to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in March, urging him to work with the federal government on its plan to keep the Heyfield Timber Mill open and protect thousands of jobs in Gippsland.

PRESSURE MOUNTING ON FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO REVIEW LEADBEATER’S POSSUM PROTECTION

Exclusion zones around Leadbeater possum colonies are blamed for job losses in the timber industry.

Mr Joyce, the federal Agriculture Minister, offered immediate access to protected parts of the Central Highlands for timber harvesting to make up for more than 10,000ha, which have been excluded to protect the leadbeater’s possum.

Environment groups and scientists have warned the animal will be extinct within 30 years unless logging is banned in the region.

The Herald Sun understands the committee must finalise its advice on the appropriate listing status by March 30 next year.

An Andrews Government review into the effectiveness of 200 metre logging buffers — designed to protect the possum’s habit — recommended in July that exclusive zones remain in place.

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