This Sunday the 23rd of August, an episode of ABC’s Background Briefing will shed light on current efforts to save Victoria’s faunal emblem, the Leadbeater’s possum.
With an estimated wild population as low as 2,000, the Leadbeater’s possum received an upgraded threat category this year and it is now considered critically endangered.
Under increasing pressure to save the marsupial from extinction, the Victorian government has been working hard to find a solution, which will likely require removing the threat of logging from the possum’s habitat.
According to the ABC‘s coverage thus far, federal environment minister Greg Hunt has invited the Victorian government to apply for a special grant that would allow it buy the logging industry out of the species’ mountain ash forests.
Interviews with spokespeople from the timber industry indicate they do not consider logging to be an immediate threat to the Leadbeater’s, nor do they believe that logging companies can be simply ‘bought out’ of the areas the state government decides it doesn’t want them.
The full article, and a teaser for the Background Briefing episode, can be found on the ABC website.