Myths, politics, and Leadbeater’s Possum

Given the structural requirements of suitable Leadbeater’s Possum habitat, there is also potential for modified timber harvesting to improve future prospects for the possum. Indeed, the conservation of the possum in wood production forests has been an important management consideration since 1987. 

One potential option would be to significantly extend the time between harvests (the rotation length) in the designated wood production forests. While this would enable trees in these production forests to stand for long enough to develop tree hollows and provide arboreal mammal habitat, it would be immediately problematic for timber volumes unless it was expanded into some reserved areas which, given the political climate, would be very unlikely.

However, extending the rotation length would have no positive benefit for decades given that most of the areas currently harvested are 73-year old bushfire regrowth where Leadbeater’s Possum will be largely absent until trees become old enough to develop nesting hollows. This is also why immediately ending timber harvesting would not provide any benefit to the possum for decades despite activists’ claims that it will save them.

Another management option already in use in Tasmania, is to adopt a timber harvesting system that retains older trees in close proximity to regrowth. This involves planning to ensure that at least half of each harvested site is within one tree length of retained forest, so that post-harvest regrowth as it develops, becomes foraging habitat for Leadbeater’s Possums that are nesting nearby.

A further option in regrowth forests would be to modify current commercial thinning practices to deliberately damage some retained trees to promote decay and facilitate the earlier development of nesting hollows.

While Professor Lindenmayer has previously spent many years advocating similar approaches as the best way to harvest timber while minimising wildlife impacts, over the past two years he has declined several invitations to engage with VicForests in regard to habitat management. Arguably, this suggests he is now more intent on helping to achieve a political outcome then on designing and implementing practical conservation strategies that would help both an endangered species and an important regional industry.

Apart from raising questions about the conduct of a prominent scientist, the Leadbeater’s Possum issue exemplifies that, largely through uncritical and supportive publicity afforded to environmental activism, we have become a society in which “green” urban myths are accepted as absolute truths, while rural realities are dismissed as self-serving myths.

Forestry is far from perfect — no activity that is so subject to the vagaries of nature can be planned and implemented with absolute precision. However, beyond the reality that it involves trees being cut down, there are rational explanations for almost every criticism levelled against native forest timber production. Unfortunately, these are often so complicated that they rarely find their way into a mainstream media beset by time and space constraints to a degree that favours simple answers to complex questions, and with a tendency to unquestioningly defer to anyone pushing a ‘green’ agenda.