State and federal Greens MPs are calling for the immediate scrapping of regional forest agreements and declaration of the Great Forest National Park to preserve remaining Leadbeater’s Possum habitat.
Federal Greens forests spokesperson Senator Janet Rice said yesterday’s announcement by federal environment minister Greg Hunt that Victoria’s animal emblem, the Leadbeater’s Possum is now critically endangered ‘is a tragic indictment of forest mismanagement by both state and federal governments’.
‘Greg Hunt should be calling on the Victorian government to immediately stop all logging in forests that Leadbeater’s Possum live in, and to scrap the Regional Forest Agreement that allows this logging to continue,’ Senator Rice said.
‘The time for further reviews and studies is over. The only thing that will save Leadbeater’s Possums from extinction is to immediately stop the clearfell logging of the forest it lives in,’ she said.
Victorian Greens forests spokesperson Samantha Dunn said the uplisting by the minister highlighted ‘the urgent need for the Andrew’s government to get on with declaring the Great Forest National Park’.
‘ If native forest logging continues to clearfell habitat, the future of the Leadbeater’s Possum is grim. The declaration of a Great Forest National Park would secure the future for Victoria’s faunal emblem and create new economic opportunities for the region,’ Ms Dunn said.
