Stop the destruction of Greater Glider habitat trees

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Dear Premier of Victoria Jacinta Allan, Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek and State Environment Minister Steve Dimopoulos

Re: Urgent response to dead Greater Gliders, hollow-bearing tree and habitat destruction in the Yarra Ranges National Park

I am deeply concerned about the widespread removal of large and hollow-bearing trees by Forest Fire Management Victoria in the Yarra Ranges National Park.

I am angry and devastated that a dead Greater Glider was found by citizen scientists in trees which conservation groups had previously informed state and Commonwealth ministers contained gliders. The felled tree is just one of scores of ancient hollow-bearing trees that FFMV are destroying within the Yarra Ranges National Park.

The clearing of cool temperate mixed forest, a listed threatened community under Victoria’s nature laws, within the critical habitat of threatened wildlife like Leadbeater’s Possums and Greater Gliders requires immediate assessment.

The Greater Glider are listed endangered under Federal and State laws and are hollow-dependent species, and habitat clearing, and fragmentation and loss of hollow-bearing trees is an identified threat for the Greater Glider.

Leadbeater’s Possums are listed as Critically Endangered under national and state environmental laws. A national recovery plan for the possum was released by Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on 5 March 2024.

The recovery plan pledges a commitment from state and national governments to prevent the possums from going extinct. Both governments are responsible for its implementation under section 269(2) of the EPBC Act. 
The Yarra Ranges National Park consists of current and prospective suitable habitat, which under the Recovery Plan is identified as critical habitat to the survival of the species where no destruction or modification should take place.

The Leadbeater’s Possums decline is largely due to the ongoing collapse of large hollow-bearing trees and the reduction in the extent of mature ash forest, or areas that will become mature in the future, through historical timber harvesting. Its range has considered to be reduced by 88% since European settlement and is now largely restricted to the Mountain Ash forest of the Central Highlands and Yarra Ranges.

The Recovery Plan pledges to deliver, by the end of the first year, that: “A management regime is in place to ensure that all large, live and dead trees, and hollow-bearing trees, are progressively identified and effectively protected” (Action [Sic]2.7 Objective 2 deliverables. Page 55).

Under the Recovery Plan, this involves the urgent priority to: “Protect and buffer all large (over 150 cm DBH) and hollow-bearing trees (where over 80 cm DBH)”.
 
The recovery plan also states that “Strategic fuel breaks have been constructed… To reduce the risk of these breaks fragmenting Leadbeater’s possum habitat, bands of wattle and ash forest are retained at 100 m intervals in some areas, and removal of hollow-bearing trees is restricted (Department of Sustainability and Environment 2008b)” page 43. This is far from the truth of what is occurring on the ground.

These breaks were originally cleared in 2007-2008, with much community debate, to the point where the federal department put conditions on the initial clearing to avoid significant impacts to threatened wildlife, including Leadbeater’s Possums. For Leadbeater’s Possums, this included a requirement that nest boxes must be installed where habitat trees for the possum are removed. These requirements lapsed in 2010 when the project life terminated.

The ongoing logging occurring now, over 15 years later, has not been referred to the federal government to assess for any potential significant impacts to threatened wildlife, like Leadbeater’s Possums. There are no restrictions placed on the removal of hollow-bearing habitat trees, nor are there requirements to artificially replace the hollows that are lost.

Hundreds of trees are being logged, many which contain critical hollows for our threatened wildlife. Local group Wildlife of the Central Highlands (WOTCH) have identified and documented over 100 hollow bearing trees ear-marked for removal – including trees that meet Victoria’s threshold for big tree protection.

WOTCH have also recorded many endangered Greater Gliders living inside the trees earmarked for removal, one of which has now been found dead. More trees have been felled since, endangering more of these threatened creatures.

It is apparent that the operations are having, and will continue to have, a significant impact on matters of national environmental significance, namely federally listed species.   Accordingly, absent referral and assessment under the National Environmental laws (EPBC Act), the operations are potentially unlawful and must cease immediately.

The Victorian National Parks Association has documented areas where works have been completed and measured some trees removed at greater than 10 metres in circumference. There were also trees removed with distinctive key-hole entrance hollows indicative of Leadbeater’s Possum presence.

The scale of these logging operations are extremely significant because they are logging up to one tree length (~40m) either side of (including within) the existing fuel breaks, five times larger than the footprint covered by their initial clearing (20m). That’s 800 hectares of critical Leadbeater’s Possum habitat targeted for logging by Forest Fire Management Victoria this season alone!

At the end of the days, the operations are removing old hollow-bearing trees known to comprise habitat for critically endangered and endangered species whose very persistence in the wild is at risk due to the decline in availability of hollow-bearing trees.

I ask that you request a stop to the current works, while an assessment is undertaken, and that the Greater Glider and commitments made in the Leadbeater’s Possum Recovery Plan be honoured.

I eagerly await your prompt and decisive action on this matter.
 
Sincerely,

BREAKING: On 24 May, Forest Fire Management Victoria felled yet another ancient hollowed tree in the Yarra Ranges National Park.

Citizen scientists have found a dead Greater Glider near a felled habitat tree. The tragedy? We’d repeatedly warned state and federal ministers that gliders are living in the trees.

FFMV must put down their chainsaws and stop cutting down hollow-beating trees in the Yarra Ranges National Park.

These works must cease until a proper ecological assessment is done.

Many of these old-growth trees have observations of Greater Gliders living in them. Some have Critically Endangered Leadbeater’s Possums recorded nearby.

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