Saving Leadbeater's Possum or logging?

Let me not mince my words. The Leadbeater's Possum Advisory Group's recommendations, as accepted by the Victorian Government, are, in Prime Ministerial terms, 'crap'.

It's not that LPAG's work was worthless. It gathered information, considered a range of proposals and generated powerful conclusions.

However, a mediocre outcome was always inevitable given the government's Terms of Reference, imposed to ensure a result consistent with its declared policy of allowing continued logging of Leadbeater's shrinking habitat.

Of the many individual proposals assessed by the group, a Great Forest National Park finished a 'country mile' ahead of all the others, improving the species' prospects by a full 10%. Most of the short-listed actions scored 1% or less and the runner-up a dismal 4%.

When 'packages' were compiled and compared, new prescriptions developed by the Australian National University, including a new park, increased the probability of a 'good' outcome by a score of 19. In stark contrast, the accepted recommendations scored a paltry 7!

The state government's Terms of Reference (ToR) demanded that recommendations be "focused on supporting the recovery of the Leadbeater's Possum while maintaining a sustainable timber industry".

Packages of proposals fell into two groups: those that would do little either to support the possum or to threaten the industry, and those, like the new park and ANU prescriptions, that had a real chance of effectively addressing the possum's extinction risk by significantly reducing the scale and intensity of logging in its habitat.

Because they challenged the industry, the latter had to be rejected as 'not within the ToR'. In this way, the government (and industry group members, the Victorian Association of Forest Industries and VicForests) ensured that only recommendations consistent with supporting logging could survive analysis.

Friends of Leadbeater's Possum group reviewed and assessed the recommendations.

Several appear well-intentioned but on close inspection are inadequate.In some cases, such as placing a buffer around colonies and reducing (by 2) the number of potential nest trees needed before habitat is protected, the proposed change is far too modest. Imposing a two-year delay on logging areas where modelling shows possums are most likely to be and placing buffers around "old-growth" will have little or no effect as they will apply only to limited areas and most such areas are already protected.

There is little confidence that 'Retention Harvesting' will be fully implemented (even in half of coupes as recommended) as this would be inconsistent with an industry-imposed 5% cap on yield reduction.

So much for the 'good' recommendations. From here on it's all downhill.

A couple can be reasonably characterised as 'investigations', with unknown and possibly negative results taking decades and coming too late, given the species is on a rapid trajectory to extinction. These include trials of alternative post-logging regeneration practices, nest-boxes, and methods of artificially damaging trees to encourage accelerated development of nest hollows.

Translocation is also to be considered – a high-risk strategy indeed, even if there were sufficient animals and suitable (yet vacant) protected habitat to translocate them to.

All remaining recommendations deal with incidental issues such as fire management, community engagement, and monitoring and review. These are, or should be, already occurring to some extent. They mean well but are unlikely to produce any tangible benefits to support the possum's survival.

Critically, several important proposals didn't make the cut and have been omitted altogether.

The government's own research, and that of the ANU, found that the current Reserve System is inadequate to provide for the species' survival. Yet the recommendations contain no proposal for a significant increase in the reserve, and none to compensate for the 45% lost in the 2009 bushfires.

Nor is there any recommendation to protect the critically important individual hollow-bearing trees that have become so rare.

Trees germinated before 1900 are not supposed to be harvested, but are frequently destroyed or damaged during logging or post-logging fires. Any that remain are exposed and often lost soon after. They must be protected from logging and its after-effects within adequate buffers.

There is no recommendation to increase the width of streamside buffers, as called for in the ANU prescriptions. Currently these buffers are too narrow to provide habitat for Leadbeater's, though they often contain old trees. This is an important omission of a significant proposal.

In stark contrast to the Advisory Group's derisory recommendations, is the proposal for a new Great Forest National Park. This was clearly identified by LPAG as the option 'considered most likely to have the greatest benefit to the species'.

LPAG's model "suggests that the Lindenmayer et al. prescriptions option [which includes establishment of a Great Forest NP], offers the best chance of recovery for the species". It was also the 'strongest call' from the public, appearing in 70% of written submissions.

It was excluded by the Terms of Reference.

The gulf between effective proposals to conserve the state's animal emblem and those accepted by the logging industry is clear evidence that we can no longer pretend that the recovery of Leadbeater's from the brink of extinction is compatible with the continued destruction of its habitat by industrial logging. The time has come to choose.

It appears the government has made its choice. Maybe it's time to choose a new government.