Saving Leadbeater's Possum or logging?

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.