The Leadbeater’s Possum is critically endangered and logging the Mountain Ash forests in which it lives is a real threat to its already fragile hold on survival. It was considered extinct until 1961. It is rare, it is elusive, and it is certainly worth saving.

The green movement has successfully used the possum as a tool to close down one of Gippsland’s major industries, but these same well-intentioned environmentalists haven’t thought it through.

The timber industry will close on January 1 next year and any environmentalist who thinks that it is the end of it and pats themselves on the back, is seriously misguided. They have helped the cause of the possum, but they may well have put direct pressure on the equally endangered Sumatran tiger and indeed the Orangutan.

We need hardwood in Australia and closing down the industry before sufficient hardwood plantations are ready to harvest, simply means we will bring in hardwood from elsewhere; and ‘elsewhere’ is very likely to include Sumatra, Borneo, and Malaysia, among others.

There is not one tiger roaming the Mountain Ash country in Gippsland’s alpine areas, so they haven’t been considered in the equation. The trouble is that precious few remain in Indonesia and their habitat is under great threat from many sides, one of which is logging. We won’t stop using hardwood just because we close the local industry so we will put the tiger under threat, each of which requires about thirty square kilometres of territory to survive.

Many timber species come from Asia and it is likely they will come here to fill the gap when our logging industry is shut down. This is extremely bad luck for the tiger. Bad luck for the Orangutan; good luck for the possum and terrible luck for the thousands of people in Gippsland who will lose their livelihoods. And bad luck for the economy of Gippsland and the dramatic knock-on effect its closure will have.

The state government performance has been abysmal. They announced some time ago that they would close the industry in 2030. Just prior to the last election they assured the timber industry they would support it until 2030. After easily winning another term, they announced without any consultation at all, that the industry would close on January 1 next year. In a very telling admission, the government also admitted that pressure from the activist green movement helped cement its decision to slam the door on the industry six years earlier than agreed.

Here are a few facts that most people and certainly the fringe green left, don’t know or don’t want to know.

• Loggers may only take four trees in every ten thousand and only 6 per cent of the total forest is available for logging.
• Every tree taken has to be replaced by another and that tree must be encouraged to grow and not ignored and forgotten.
• It takes 60 years for a logged coupe to be ready for logging again. One young fourth-generation Gippsland logger was recently harvesting trees from a coupe planted by his grandfather. It is a sustainable industry with a long lead time.
• Australia has among the world’s strictest logging practices and is miles ahead of anywhere north of us.
• We are looking at the loss of thousands of jobs in an industry generating hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

At a recent ‘Rally In The Valley’ organised by the Gippsland People’s Council, an estimated five hundred people turned out in Traralgon on a very cold Saturday to listen to many speakers. The crowd was silent, respectful, peaceful, and clearly quietly angry. It takes a lot to rile country folk but riled they were, particularly at the local Latrobe City Council which instead of supporting its people and their wellbeing, sold out with five councillors supporting the government outweighing the four who didn’t.

The GPC is a relatively new community group and is at the forefront of the fight. Local woman, Carleen Haylock started the group two years ago to handle the stresses brought on by Covid and her group has 300 members and many more signed up at the rally that Saturday. The GPC is a community group that values education, motivation, and inspiration, and a strong Gippsland. I spoke to Carleen, who said:

‘We have been accused of being Nazis, domestic terrorists, anti-vaxxers, and anti-social and we are none of that. We want jobs for our kids, prosperity for Gippsland and we want our councillors to start listening to the people and not hiding behind closed doors.’

I conclude with four suggestions:

1. That the timber industry wake up and fight fire with fire. It is important to save the possum, but it is not okay to put the death sentence on tigers and Orangutans as a consequence. The industry has a powerful tool here if it chooses to use it and it might just buy some time.
2. To the latte-green-fringe and genuine environmentalists, consider the butterfly effect of your actions. Think about the tiger and the Orangutan. Think about the environmental cost of bringing a log from Borneo to Orbost compared to the environmental cost of using local logs. And if enough goodwill and enough money is thrown at preserving the Leadbeater’s Possum, solutions will be found.
3. To the Latrobe City Council; show some leadership and courage and help the industry save the possum and save the industry at least until sufficient hardwood plantations are ready to replace existing harvesting and that is certainly not January 1 next year.
4. To the Victorian state government, show some sense and a willingness to listen, both of which have been sorely lacking.

Surely it is time for common sense. It is certainly time to act locally while thinking internationally.

Trevor Colvin is a retired newspaperman who lives in Gippsland and who also spent fifteen years heavily involved in Landcare at various levels. He is also a member of the Gippsland People’s Council.