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First published in The Age on May 12, 1993
Rare possum’s habitat destroyed by mistake
A mapping error has resulted in the destruction of a prime habitat of one of Victoria’s rarest mammals, the endangered Leadbeater’s possum.
A leadbeater’s possum.Credit: Justin McManus
Some five hectares of regrowth forest east of Powelltown containing dead, hollow trees in which the possum nests, was destroyed by loggers two weeks ago, angering members of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria and the Victorian National Parks Association.
But according to the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the logging contractor was not to blame.
Mr Malcolm Macfarlane, the ecologist at the department’s Arthur Rylah Research Institute who devised the draft conservation strategy for Leadbeater’s possum, acknowledged that the fault lay with the department.
“We made a blue,” he said. “The management of Leadbeater’s possum was very much to the forefront when plans for this coupe (reserve) were drawn up.
“The problem was that there was some confusion over the location of the drainage line marking the boundary of the coupe as inferred from the original air-photo interpretation.”
Mr Ray Gibson, head of the Field Naturalists Club’s fauna survey group, who visited the area, said much of the possum’s habitat, known as zone one, had been logged.
Based on reports from the Field Naturalists Club, and its own surveys, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources had set aside the five-hectare reserve, plus a smaller area within the coupe.
Mr Gibson said wildlife officers and logging supervisors were supposedly trained to recognise zone one habitat, but this had apparently not happened.
But Mr Macfarlane said that while wildlife officers and logging supervisors were thus trained, the first consideration of loggers in the field was their work and their safety.
“We don’t have a street directory for this sort of terrain, and we will have to wear the occasional mistake,” he said.
“The implementation of the draft strategy (for Leadbeater’s possum) has gone very well and this sort of incident has been a rarity.”
Leadbeater’s possum, classified as a rare and endangered species, became rare around the turn of the century and was presumed extinct after 1910.
An Australian National University ecologist, Dr David Lindenmayer, has warned that the possum is again endangered and could be virtually extinct in the wild within half a century.
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