Inside the fight to save the last Victorian Highlands forest fairies

It’s approaching 11pm and we’ve walked off the track and into dense bushland in the Central Highlands, trying not to stumble over fallen logs in torchlight.

We’re in pursuit of critically endangered Leadbeater’s possums – commonly known as forest fairies, but perhaps better described as forest gremlins for their sparky personalities – which live in the Central Highlands and Yarra Ranges.

The citizen scientists leading us through the bush are armed with a mix of technological traps and spotlights to gather evidence they will use to try to defend the last survivors of the species. But the odds are against them. It’s estimated only 4000 Leadbeater’s possums remain in the wild, although no one knows for sure.

An elusive and critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum photographed in state forest at the perimeter of a private logging site.Credit: WOTCH

We switch off our torches and everyone falls silent. Blake Nisbet, a campaigner with Wildlife of the Central Highlands (WOTCH), cups his hands around his mouth and utters a series of sharp hisses. It’s the elusive and charismatic Leadbeater’s possum call.

None answer, but no one here minds. Minutes earlier Nisbet had checked a motion-sensor camera planted in the bush opposite a tiny bait station strapped to a tree and filled with honey (he’s at pains to explain the animals can’t actually reach the bait and become reliant on it).

To everyone’s delight, 11 images of animals were captured at the station over a three-week period (a sturdy mountain brush-tailed possum was particularly keen on the bait). Three images were of one or more Leadbeater’s possums, photographed on February 13, 16 and 17.

This region, which includes state forest, national park and private property, is key habitat for Leadbeater’s possums, greater gliders (whose numbers have plummeted by 80 per cent in the past two decades), sugar gliders and yellow-bellied gliders.

The forest dwellers rely on old, hollow trees for their very survival. They need interconnected trees to flit or fly between, and they have limited ranges – for greater gliders it’s between 0.7 and 3 hectares.

And herein lies the problem.

Mature hollow-bearing trees like this one are crucial for the survival of Victoria’s endangered species.Credit: Wayne Taylor

It takes at least 120 years for mountain ash and alpine ash to develop hollows critical for gliders and Leadbeater’s possums to survive. But older trees have been targeted for removal by Victorian government contractors – even in remote forest – because they could pose a risk to the safety and welfare of firefighters and other emergency services fighting bushfires.

The increasing severity of bushfires linked with climate change are also inhibiting the creation of new hollows in species of trees that take decades to reach maturity, and to reach the height required to withstand fires.

Despite the Victorian government’s logging ban taking effect last January, the old-growth trees these tiny creatures call home are still being felled for commercial logging on private land.

And then there’s the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) itself.

Under an expanded “strategic fuel break” program to combat bushfires quietly unveiled last year, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) plans to construct up to 6000 kilometres of fire-break tracks, up to 40 metres wide, through state forests and national parks by 2030 – up from a previously announced 1447 kilometres.

On Sunday evening our group stood at the base of an enormous old mountain grey gum, which measured 9 metres in circumference and would have stood 100 metres tall before Captain James Cook first set foot on the continent. Drone footage captured last year shows it soaring well above the canopy, its crags and hollows offering protection to endangered animals and its green growth providing their food.

Now it is reduced to a stump, having been felled by contractors working to reduce the risk to firefighters in the event of a bushfire in the remote bush.

“We’ve been monitoring the forest industry for 10 years, and we’ve never seen a tree this big cut down,” Nisbet says. “It’s devastating. We told them.”

Letters seen by The Age show groups including WOTCH, the Victorian National Parks Association and Environmental Justice Australia have repeatedly written to Victorian Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos and his department to warn DEECA’s strategic fuel-break program is removing critical habitat trees, including the giant mountain grey gum. WOTCH says four hollow-bearing trees it saw greater gliders emerging from were later felled by government workers.

“It’s just extremely frustrating that we’re just getting radio silence at the other end, and there clearly seems to be a communication error from what we’re telling them to what’s happening on the ground,” Nisbet says.

“Our endangered wildlife are suffering the impacts of that.”

WOTCH member Blake Nisbet at the base of the old-growth mountain grey gum, which would have stood 100 metres tall before Captain Cook first landed in what is now Australia.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Under the federal government’s 2024 national recovery blueprint to save Leadbeater’s possums, tree felling that is likely to significantly impact threatened species, including the Leadbeater’s possum, must be referred to Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.

Environmental Justice Australia senior lawyer Nicola Silbert said: “Federal environment laws apply on private land and operators whose activities are likely to cause significant impact to threatened species must get permission to destroy habitat. It’s not optional – it’s their legal obligation.”

A Victorian government spokesman said trees felled in strategic fuel breaks could help protect Leadbeater’s possums’ habitat.

“We know how important it is to protect and care for Victoria’s native plants and wildlife, particularly the Leadbeater’s possum, [which] is why we are working with the Commonwealth on the Leadbeater’s possum recovery plan to help protect and increase population numbers,” he said.

“Strategic fuel breaks enable firefighters to get access to the forest for responding to fires and to carry out backburning in the event of a major bushfire, and are a critical part of [the department’s] strategy to protect communities and the environment – including the Leadbeater’s possum and its habitat – from bushfire.”

Australian National University Professor David Lindenmayer, an international expert on forest ecology, said he couldn’t “speak lowly enough” of the Victorian government’s management of old-growth trees in native forests.

Professor David Lindenmayer said he “can’t speak lowly enough” of the Victorian government’s management of old-growth trees.Credit: Wolter Peeters

“If you have major wildfires in such high biomass forests, you shouldn’t have firefighters in there in the first place – that’s ridiculous,” he said.

“Look at a 70- or 80-year-old mountain ash. It weighs about 80 tonnes. Are we seriously saying that we’re going to have to cut all of those down as well?”

Meanwhile, environment and community groups have turned to technology in the increasingly desperate fight to protect native forests in Victoria.

In the Yarra Valley and Central Highlands, that fight now includes drones to monitor logging operations, spotlighting surveys to gather evidence of animals in the area, and sensitive cameras planted in remote locations to gather evidence.

Five minutes from the trees felled on the public purse are 120 hectares of privately owned forest on Mount Horsfall Road, where the commercial harvesting of native timber is under way.

Property records show Powelltown Sawmills took possession of the 120-hectare site, which borders the Yarra Ranges National Park on one side and state forest on another, in February 2023.

A Forest Stewardship Council audit report obtained by this masthead shows the mountain ash at Mount Horsfall is destined to be sold as logs, firewood, sawn timber, sawdust, and woodchips (Mount Horsfall is one of seven properties managed as a group by Forest Strategy, which has Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for the bundle of sites).

Armed with the photos of Leadbeater’s possums from their camera hidden near the fence line, WOTCH this week sought an urgent intervention from Plibersek, her department, the Victorian government, Baw Baw Shire and the Office of the Conservation Regulator to halt logging on the property.

A greater glider in the Central Highlands.Credit: Justin Cally

Baw Baw Shire planning and compliance director Luke Connell said the council issued a planning permit for logging on the property in 2019.

“Council routinely conducts audits at properties following the approval of a planning permit to ensure the correct protocols are being followed,” he said.

“The Leadbeater is federally protected under the Wildlife Act, which local government does not have the jurisdiction to enforce.”

When The Age accompanied Nisbet and Jordan Crook, campaigner with the Victorian National Parks Association, into the forest on Sunday, we saw half a dozen gliders in trees neighbouring those felled by government contractors, just minutes away from the commercial logging coupe.

Part of the challenge of protecting these critical habitats is their remoteness, but this doesn’t detract from their importance to the entire state, says Crook.

Jordan Crook of the Victorian National Parks Association says the area’s biodiverse forests are “incredibly precious”.Credit: Wayne Taylor

“The incredibly biodiverse forests in the areas that have escaped the logging industry are incredibly precious … it’s the ecosystems but also the functions that they provide as well.”

A 2023 interim report by the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council found Victoria’s mountain ash forests are among the highest-density carbon sinks in the world.

“Most of Melbourne’s water comes from those forests, [which] store the most carbon out of any forests in the world – they create our water and store our carbon, and it’s an incredibly beautiful place. We’d be stuffed without it.”

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