Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

(i) that in April 2015, the Minister for the Environment up-listed Victoria’s animal emblem, the Leadbeater’s Possum, to critically endangered which is one category level prior to becoming extinct in the wild,

(ii) the ‘Threatened Species Strategy Action Plan 2015-16—20 mammals by 2020’ released by the Government on 16 July 2015 states that emergency intervention is required for this species, and

(iii) the scientific evidence states that the main threats to the Leadbeater’s Possum habitat are native forest logging and fire, and that fire risk is exacerbated by logging activity; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) take urgent action to immediately protect the Leadbeater’s Possum from extinction, including:

(a) immediately listing the montane ash forests of the Victorian Central Highlands on the Register of Critical Habitat, and

(b) working with the Victorian Government to implement an immediate moratorium on logging in the native forests of Victorian Central Highlands, while the taskforce considering the future of logging in these forests carries out its investigations, and

(ii) scrap the Regional Forest Agreement which entrenches industrial scale clear fell logging in these forests.