By KATH GANNAWAY
ZOOS Victoria and the Victorian Association of Forest industries have been charged with pulling together an advisory group to look at the future of Leadbeater’s possum.
Minister for Environment Ryan Smith announced last week that the Leadbeater’s Possum Advisory Group (LPAG) was set up at the request of himself and Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh with its aim to consider the best ways of ensuring the future of the endangered possum.
The State Government has also committed $1 million to implement immediate actions arising from recommendations made by the LPAG.
While timber industry groups such as VAFI and Friends of Forestry have welcomed the move, environment groups are questioning the motives, and the timing, and world authority on the possum ANU’s professor David Lindenmayer is also sceptical.
Minister Ryan said the government was committed to balancing biodiversity outcomes with a sustainable timber industry and that a partnership approach was important with all stakeholders being asked to share their knowledge and views to ensure a co-ordinated approach.
VAFI CEO Lisa Marty said the process would offer stakeholders a chance to take a new approach and work together to support the recovery of the possum.
She said biodiversity conservation was a key priority for VAFI and its members who were also concerned about the impact of the 2009 bushfires on the future of the possum.
She said bushfires were the biggest threat to the recovery of the possum and the local forest and wood products industry.
Healesville based Friends of Forestry have welcomed the move as a positive step for biodiversity and economic needs of timber communities.
FoF president Brett Robin said: “The correlation between major fire events and the Leadbeater’s rediscovery (after the 1939 bushfires) could mean that thousands of hectares of previously unsuitable forests could be potential Leadbeater’s habitat.
He said vast stands of mountain ash burnt in the 2009 fires were regenerating providing prime Leadbeater’s habitat with burnt stags and an abundant food source.
Professor Lindenmayer said he had been asked to join the group but was not interested in being a pseudo consultant when the government has had access years of scientific information through the avenues including the Leadbeater’s Recovery Team whose recommendations had been systematically ignored.
“The bottom line is in a very short space of time – within a month, there needs to be a major set of announcements – a very large expansion of the reserve system, radically altered prescriptions, 75 per cent reduce in sustained yield starting 1 January next year, a set of packages to help people get out (of the timber industry), funding from the Federal Government to get the industry largely out of native forest and into plantations and a tourism package for the region so people are able to enjoy the area for what it is,” he said.
My Environment director Sarah Rees said the environment group had declined to join the LPAG while they are in a court action with VicForests.
“What we think is it is linked to their attempts to get Forest Stewardship Certification to facilitate contractual arrangements with Australian Paper and this is an easy way of getting the stakeholders’ group which they have to do to get FSC.
“We can’t see anything on the ground that would suggest they are legitimate about protection of this species,” Ms Rees said.
“There is a specific taskforce for the protection of Leadbeater’s possum which made recommendations but they were ignored.”
Ms Rees said it was a bizarre move to make the Victorian logging lobby joint co-ordinator with Zoos Victoria who she said were another conservation agency funded by the government.
“Will they facilitate the process to the best of their ability? I would say they would.
“They have a good heart, but an absence of knowledge.”
Mr Smith said the LPAG’s focus from June to September would be on drafting recommendations.
