http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/a-state-of-extinction-20121206-2ay41.html

Bushfires and logging have taken a terrible toll on the habitat of the rare Leadbeater’s possum. How long can it survive? Bridie Smith and Tom Arup report.

THE ground squelches underfoot, the forest a mass of branches criss-crossing between the slender trunks of mountain swamp gum and the ferny undergrowth. This is Leadbeater’s possum country. And one of the tiny critters is about to get a rude awakening.

It’s late in the afternoon, but for the endangered nocturnal possum it’s the middle of the night. Its round black eyes are fully alert by the time it has been scooped from its timber nest box high in a mountain swamp gum and popped into a brown cotton bag.

Still radiating the body heat it has generated and shared with its nest buddies, the young male is weighed and measured at ground level before being returned to his treetop home.

A clear-felled Leadbeater possum habitat in Victoria’s central highlands. Photo: Justin McManus

The annual weigh-in, which also gathers genetic data, is a vital opportunity for biologists to check the health of Victoria’s faunal emblem and one of the rarest mammals in the country.

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But what the surveying scientists are increasingly finding is a species under stress. Fire has destroyed much of its habitat, and conservationists say logging is putting pressure on the rest.

Now there are serious suggestions Victoria is watching its animal emblem head towards extinction. And there are calls for intervention.

After studying the marsupial for more than three decades, ecologist David Lindenmayer gives the possum’s survival in the wild just 20 years. ”If we don’t seriously look at conserving these intact areas of forest, then that’s all we’ve got,” he says. ”This is the time to make sensible decisions and go for it.”

At the Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve, a small patch of swampy forest is home to the last remaining lowland population. As its habitat shrinks, the past eight years has seen a 40 per cent decline in Leadbeater’s possum there. Numbering no more than 60, they are now concentrated in an area measuring just four kilometres by 120 metres.

The situation is not much better for the other, larger, population of Leadbeater’s in the tall, cool, mountain ash forests of Victoria’s central highlands. Exact highlands numbers are unknown, but are likely to be somewhere under 2000.

On Black Saturday, more than one-third of public land within the Leadbeater’s highland habitat range was burnt. Studies by researchers at the Australian National University and the Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research have found that Leadbeater’s have not returned. Highland possums like to live deep in hollows of old trees, so young trees tend not to be suitable. Victoria’s central highlands are dominated by young forest – 99 per cent of the trees are from 1939 or later – and just 1 per cent of the mountain ash forest is old growth.

Lindenmayer says the front line of the fight to save the endangered species is the mountain forest, and that if the young forest isn’t allowed to age, the possum will vanish.

Here lies the problem. As fire and felling shrinks forests, competition for the remaining resources between loggers and conservationists has intensified to such an extent that the petite possum, which weighs no more than an apple, is now a hefty political problem.

”Leadbeater’s possum is an iconic species, somewhat like Victoria’s tiger or panda,” says Dan Harley, Healesville Sanctuary’s threatened species biologist.

The dilemma facing the state government is that it wants to provide the timber industry with resource security to meet its contracts. That means nominating areas for the protection of Leadbeater’s and other threatened species, and allowing logging elsewhere.

Harley says there are some risks to this approach. First, it needs to be established where the possum’s stronghold populations are.

”At the moment we are protecting sites based on habitat attributes, which makes perfect sense, but you need to know that the possums are in there and at the moment we don’t have that information,” he says.

Second, protecting some areas invariably leads to others being logged. Clearing these areas puts pressure on those remaining sites – which are still vulnerable to fires, such as those on Black Saturday were.

”What Black Saturday did was wipe out areas you thought were important and suddenly the marginal areas become increasingly significant,” he says.

Experience points to how precarious possum populations can be. Black Saturday wiped out a Lake Mountain population of about 300, leaving just six individuals in a partly burnt gully, half of which died. The remaining three were taken to Healesville Sanctuary earlier this year, with two still living.

When the 2009 Black Saturday fires swept through the tall mountain ash forest in the central highlands, it was indiscriminate. It burnt 1939 regrowth, 15-year-old regrowth and areas of thick forest that date back to the 1700s.

Studies of the forest after the fires showed that the younger forest burned at a faster rate. While it sounds counter-intuitive, Professor Lindenmayer and his colleagues found that the complexity of older forests which have a dense understorey of wattle and tree ferns slowed the flames down. The microclimate was also more moist and burned at a lower intensity.

Victorian government data suggests the average annual gross area for timber harvest in the central highlands over the next four years will be 3547 hectares. The actual area felled is normally slightly less.

In the Supreme Court last year, conservationists challenged three proposed logging coupes in the central highlands on grounds they contravened protection protocols for Leadbeater’s.

Justice Robert Osborn found the coupes did not breach the existing state possum protections. But he added there was strong evidence for an urgent review of areas dedicated to possums because the 2009 bushfires had dramatically changed the landscape.

At the same time there have been lengthy delays in strengthening state and federal government plans to restore Leadbeater’s numbers to respond to the habitat loss.

Fairfax Media has obtained drafts of the revised state and national plans for the species dating back to 2009 and 2010, which are yet to be put in place. These plans note the massive reduction in habitat after the Black Saturday fires and put forward 25 measures to better protect the species, costing $4.6 million over five years on early estimates.

Serious concerns about habitat loss are shared by an expert panel dedicated to the recovery of Leadbeater’s and made up of representatives of the state Environment Department, Parks Victoria, Zoos Victoria and the scientific community. By late last year the possum recovery team was so agitated by the emerging data on habitat loss that it proposed a moratorium on central highlands logging until better protections were put in place.

But after raising its concerns within the Environment Department the team was told bluntly it could not make such a recommendation and talk of a moratorium ended.

Instead the committee wrote to the department in March, proposing changes to the current state possum recovery plan, including listing logging and future loss of suitable habitat as threats to the species’ survival.

The panel also recommends tightening the definition of Leadbeater’s habitat and tougher prescriptions for logging operations in the region to slow habitat loss.

”The Leadbeater’s Possum Recovery Team is concerned with the rapid and dramatic loss of habitat for Leadbeater’s possum that has been exacerbated by the 2009 wildfires,” the letter says.

Late last year, the Baillieu government sought to boost the flagging forestry industry by allowing VicForests to offer contracts over two decades, up from the previous five-years.

The government also committed to indemnifying VicForests if a contract is broken due to changes in policy, potentially leaving taxpayers with the bill should a future government want to reduce native timber logging.

Lindenmayer says there is not enough in the mountain ash forests to meet contract timber quotas. Logging coupes are in areas that returned to life after the 1939 fires. This, Professor Lindenmayer estimates, is a finite resource which only has another 10 to 15 years left.

”At current rates of cutting, the sawlog industry will be exhausted in 15 years’ time. The industry itself is on an extinction trajectory.”

In a paper published in the journal Science on Friday, Lindenmayer writes that the mountain ash are forecast to decline from 5.1 trees per hectare in 1997 to 0.6 trees per hectare in 2070.

And, the Australian National University professor says, there are just 12 months left to implement the drastic changes that are needed to save the possum.

At a briefing for government agencies including Parks Victoria and the Department of Sustainability and Environment last week, Lindenmayer called for a Great Forest National Park to be established in Victoria’s central highlands.

Lindenmayer said logging should be reduced by half and the carbon storage capacity of the forest be harnessed by bringing in brokers to establish a carbon offset program involving big business.

Lindenmayer says exit packages should be made available to loggers who have contracts with VicForests – with the proviso that the companies exit for good. He also argues VicForests needs a ”cultural overhaul” so forest management focuses on the carbon storage potential of the mountain ash rather than treating the trees as a source of timber and pulp.

For its part, the timber industry says logging’s footprint on forests is only small and it doesn’t log in old-growth forest in the highlands. ”The primary threat to the Leadbeater’s possum habitat is not forestry, but fire,” says Lisa Marty, chief executive of the Victorian Association of Forest Industries.

VicForests spokesman David Walsh says it believes Leadbeater’s can co-exist with timber harvesting.

Walsh says VicForests is committed to identifying and protecting potential habitat in areas where logging operations are planned and supports any review of the forest zoning system.

VicForests will factor in the impact of the bushfires on how much they log and from where.

He says medium-term outlooks shows a dip in the availability of highlands timber because of past bushfires. Sales commitments and harvest levels will be managed in line with this.

Victoria’s Environment Minister, Ryan Smith, says in response to the debate the Victorian government has begun a $1.86 million project to survey endangered species.

Smith says it will help strike the best possible balance between timber production and the protection of biodiversity.

To date, the main response to the decline of Leadbeater’s has centred around a captive breeding program at Healesville Sanctuary.

But the man who each year goes out into the swampy Yellingbo forest to weigh and measure Leadbeater’s says the current approach is less than ideal.

Despite being the architect of the captive breeding program, Harley stresses it is not the answer in the crucial mountain forests.

While captive breeding is important, he says, the main game remains habitat conservation.

”Leadbeater’s conservation will be won or lost in the mountain forests,” he says.

”The foundation stone of everything is to ensure that you’ve got an adequate amount of high-quality habitat for a species. And if you don’t have that, then nothing else you try is going to work.”

http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-forests-grand-old-masters-20121209-2b3ln.html

RESEARCHERS have put the globe’s big old trees on a par with animals such as whales, lions and tigers that have low populations and are vulnerable to decline.

Following a stocktake of the world’s large old trees, Australian and American researchers have found that such trees – the largest living organisms on the planet – are declining at all latitudes.

”Just as large-bodied animals such as elephants, tigers and cetaceans [such as whales] have declined drastically in many parts of the world, a growing body of evidence suggests that large old trees could be equally imperilled,” the authors conclude.

Variously informed by logging, land clearing, fire and agricultural intensification, the trend has been documented in a range of environments – from urban environments in Europe to temperate savannah in southern Africa and tropical forests in Asia, South and Central America.

Australian National University ecologist David Lindenmayer worked with colleagues from James Cook University and the University of Washington to map the decline internationally.

”It’s turned out to be a global problem that has been overlooked before,” he said. ”While we better understand it in [Victoria's] mountain ash forests because they’re so well documented, it’s happening worldwide.”

Just 1 per cent of Victoria’s central highland forests are made up of old growth trees that pre-date the 1939 fires. Those old trees – some dating back to the 1700s – are under constant threat of fire. After the Black Saturday firestorm, 79 per cent of large trees with cavities died.

In a paper published in the journal Science this month, Professor Lindenmayer forecasts that the mountain ash are set to decline from 5.1 trees per hectare in 1997 to 0.6 trees per hectare in 2070.

”Big trees have massive implications for how ecosystems work,” he said.

Considered the ”keystone structures”, large old trees provide refuges and nests for wildlife. In Victoria’s highland forests the old mountain ash trees are home to about 40 species of invertebrates, including the endangered Leadbeater’s possum. The trees remain sought after long after they have died.

But the plight of large old trees is not a uniquely Victorian problem.

”Big trees are vulnerable in our tropical savannahs of the Northern Territory, in woodland and agricultural areas of New South Wales and Victoria and in the tropical rainforests of northern Australia,” Professor Lindenmayer said.

In California’s Yosemite National Park, density of the largest trees declined by 24 per cent between the 1930s and 1990s. Similarly, in southern Sweden, trees with a trunk diameter greater than 45 centimetres have declined in number from historical densities of about 19 per hectare to about one per hectare now.

”Now we recognise for the first time that big trees are also vulnerable to decline,” he said. ”And there are really big implications for that.”

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/extinction-alarm-raised-for-possum-20121216-2bhid.html

A TEAM of scientists and conservationists is pushing to escalate Victoria’s faunal emblem, Leadbeater’s possum, up the national threatened species list to critically endangered – one step below extinct.

The group will make a submission to the federal government early next year, arguing that the possum numbers have declined sharply following a major hit to their habitat in the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires.

Green groups also argue that logging is putting further pressure on the remaining animals.

There are only four mammals in Australia formally recognised as critically endangered on the threatened species list.

One, the Christmas Island pipistrelle, is regarded as extinct by many experts.

Critically endangered species are in part defined under national law as having a greater than 50 per cent chance of becoming extinct in the immediate future. Zoos Victoria threatened species biologist Dan Harley, who will contribute to the submission, said critically endangered was the last step before extinction.

”That’s those species that we are likely to lose first,” he said. ”It’s the recognition of how dire circumstances have become in the wild.”

An expert panel will assess the submission for recommendations to Environment Minister Tony Burke.

The head of the group, Steve Meacher, said a change in status would be an official acknowledgment that policies to save the species must be updated.

Among the data to be outlined is the state of the sub-alpine woodland population. Two of the three sub-alpine sites – Lake Mountain and nearby Mount Bullfight – were burnt on Black Saturday. The Lake Mountain population of about 300 animals was all but wiped out.

Of six individuals surviving, three died and the remaining three were taken to Healesville Sanctuary. At Mount Bullfight, there are now fewer than 50.

”The challenge for us to is to build a conservation strategy for this species that is robust enough to withstand future fires,” Dr Harley said.

The last remaining lowland population is at Yellingbo Nature Conservation Reserve, east of Melbourne. Here Dr Harley said the population has dropped to no more than 60, due to habitat decline.

”The species’ future is really at the crossroads,” Dr Harley said. ”It is now or never if we are going to save it from extinction.”

http://www.starnewsgroup.com.au/mail/mountain-views/332/story/148995.html

As someone who has made the bus and train trip into Melbourne’s Supreme Court for every sitting of what he says is a gruelling battle between MyEnvironment and VicForests over the logging of three Toolangi coupes, he is a relative newcomer to the decades-old right to log debate.

Standing on the steps of the court last week with fellow environmentalists, he said there was a common misconception about the need for dreadlocks and a Centrelink payment as a precursor to having a genuine concern for the environment.

He and his wife Marion are committed to stopping clear-fell logging which they believe will push the critically endangered Leadbeater’s Possum to extinction.

“The ‘greenie’ thing is not what it’s about. It’s about the flora and fauna that we are losing by clear-fell logging. “I don’t believe, from what I’ve seen with my own eyes, that VicForests are working to the standards,” he said.

The suits and black legal robes of team VicForests are equally a long way from the clichéd, check shirt image of the loggers and haulage contractors they are representing.

Standing outside the Supreme Court is the legal team, including Ian Waller SC, barrister Hamish Redd, VicForests general counsel Josephine Tan and solicitor Rebecca Howe. The battleground seems a long way from the tall timbers of Toolangi and the on-ground jobs they say are under threat.

VicForests spokesman David Walsh says they are equally committed to their role and defends the clear-fell logging model that VicForests say is not only legally sanctioned by the State Government and DSE, but which they argue is sustainable and no threat to the possum.

“We recognise the importance of balancing these interests, and maintain that no area which meets the criteria for Leadbeater’s Possum habitat zones was planned for harvest,” Mr Walsh said. “We hope the findings of the court provide clarity around these issues.”

Having sat through eight days of evidence Mr Lewis says the arguments can be mind-boggling at times, but that he is hopeful, even quietly confident, of a good outcome for the Toolangi forests.

“I’m more convinced than ever that clear-fell logging is a very real threat to Leadbeater’s Possum,” he said.

“It’s like shooting rhinoceros because of the value of their horn; no-one would say that’s right, but we’re being asked to trade off these creatures for the dollars that come out of the forests.

“They have a right to live, and they have a right to live in Toolangi,” he said

The Australian December 04, 2012

FEDERAL Environment Minister Tony Burke has been urged to stop logging in Victoria’s state forests after the emergence of photographic proof that endangered Leadbeater’s possums are living near the Gun Barrel Coupe in Toolangi.

More than 1000 photographs of two possums, the Victorian state emblem, were recovered from motion-sensor cameras last weekend. MyEnvironment director Sarah Rees said the pair were “literally hanging on for survival in ‘emergency housing’, a decrepit tree in an old logging coupe”.

The discovery of Leadbeater’s possums and the call for Mr Burke to intervene coincides with negotiations for the transfer of the commonwealth’s environmental decision-making powers to the states. Environment groups said they would step up pressure ahead of Friday’s COAG meeting, where the issue is due to be discussed before formal adoption next year.

Efforts to save the Leadbeater’s possum pre-date the latest campaign, but Ms Rees said the issue emphasised concerns that state governments were not prepared to act and had worked to weaken environmental protections.

“We expect the minister will see fit to immediately protect these three contentious coupes, and suspend logging in all sites that were considered materially similar by VicForests,” the MyEnvironment letter sent to Mr Burke yesterday says. “In doing so he would be acting to prevent the extinction of the Leadbeater’s possum which is being allowed under current legislation.”
MyEnvironment has been involved in a court action with VicForests over protection for the species. Julian Burnside QC is acting for the group in an appeal that is due to be heard next year.

Ms Rees said the original case had been lost on the precautionary principle because “material evidence” of the possum was considered to be insufficient.

She said the photographic evidence should change this.

Ms Rees said the court case had revealed that the state’s environmental regulators, the Department of Sustainability and Environment, and the logging agency, VicForests collaborated to successfully lower the standards of environmental protection.

The Australian has seen correspondence that shows the state government was aware of the significance of Toolangi to the recovery of the Leadbeater’s possum after the 2009 bushfires.

Department of Sustainability and Environment project leader Bram Mason said after two years of “efforts to measure impact and recovery (of Leadbeater’s) the evidence pointed to such forest being critical to population recovery”.

“On the north side of the divide the remaining green forest (all or predominantly all in state forest) is in the Toolangi area,” the correspondence said.

A spokesman for VicForests said he was not aware of the discovery near Gun Barrel Coupe. But he said VicForest’s policy was to “protect Leadbeater’s possum habitat whether there had been a sighting or not”.

Greens Leader Christine Milne said the environmental reforms were the most important issue on the COAG agenda. “It’s Julia Gillard trashing Bob Hawke’s legacy on the environment, abandoning 30 years of work on environmental protection and handing it back over to the states,” she said.

The federal government is reviewing whether Victoria breached a national forestry deal by not properly protecting Leadbeater’s possum, the state’s endangered faunal emblem, from logging.
In a letter to federal independent MP Tony Windsor, Environment Minister Tony Burke said his department was reviewing documents from a recent Supreme Court  case over three proposed logging coupes near Toolangi from state-owned timber company VicForests.
Mr Burke said that, if necessary, the department would then consult with the federal forestry department to see whether a regional forestry agreement for Victoria’s central highlands had been breached.
The tiny Leadbeater’s possum is listed as endangered under national environment laws, and suffered a major hit in the Black Saturday bushfires, which cut its habitat in half. Its numbers in the wild have been estimated at below 2000.
Conservationists argue logging by VicForests in the central highlands threatens the survival of the species.
VicForests successful defended a Supreme Court challenge last year from anti-logging groups trying to stop proposed Toolangi coupes, with Justice Robert Osborn finding they did not breach state protection conditions for the possum.
But Justice Osborn added there was strong evidence for an urgent review of the protection of the possum’s habitat following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires.
The federal and state governments have been redrafting national recovery plans and state action statements for the possum since the fires.
Drafts of the new plans, seen by Fairfax Media, recommend 25 steps to recover the species, but state and federal laws have not been enforced through changes to state and federal environment law.
It is understood a state expert panel set up to oversee recovery of the species — including representatives from the Victorian environment department, Parks Victoria, and scientists — last year recommended increasing protection of the possum.

They recommended listing logging as a threat to its survival and increasing protection of habitat during timber harvesting.
In October last year the recovery panel discussed a temporary moratorium on logging in the central highlands until the possum was better protected.
Meeting notes say the panel’s chairman took the moratorium proposal to senior bureaucrats, but was told it was not the groups’ role to make a recommendation to halt logging.
A state environment department spokesman said a new plan to save the possum would be shaped by a $1.82 million research program examining Victorian endangered species. The panel’s recommendations would be considered once the research was finished.
VicForests’ Nathan Trushell said substantial areas of prime central highlands habitat had been identified and reserved for the possum, and the timber agency would continue to take steps to protect endangered species.
Sarah Rees, from the Healesville-based green group MyEnvironment, said: ‘‘The Leadbeater’s possum story is a litmus test for environmental law. It is going extinct and this is because outmoded laws, initially designed in good faith, are now failing to safeguard it’s future.’’

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/possum-protection-under-investigation-20121101-28nc1.html#ixzz2B2zYX3bH

http://lilydale-yarra-valley-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/toolangi-festival-expects-200/

ORGANISERS of a free camping festival in Toolangi State Forest this weekend say they are expecting at least 200 people.

When the Leader visited the camp earlier today at least four dome tents had been erected behind a council-approved canvas shelter at the intersection of Monda Track and Myers Creek Rd.

Central Highlands Action Group member Ben Baker told the Leader said the group was against logging in Toolangi and the destruction of the Leadbeater’s possum habitat.

He was expecting 200 people minimum at the festival, which he said would be a peaceful protest.

“People should have the right to do what they wish when it comes to fighting for what is right … especially when no one is getting hurt,’’ Mr Baker said.

Kinglake Police Sgt Ken MacDonald said today they had spoken to about 30 CHAG members at the Toolangi camp site on Thursday night about 9pm.

Friends of Forestry committee member Graham Taylor said yesterday he couldn’t believe Yarra Ranges Council would issue a permit for a roadside shelter in the first place.

He said it was interesting to note the Monda Track site was openly promoted on the group’s web site as Camp CHAG.

“Now it’s the meeting point for this five-day protest, with protesters coming from all over Australia,’’ Mr Taylor said.

“It beggars belief that a permit was issued in the first place. If any community member went to the council and asked for a three month permit to put up a shelter on the side of the road, they would be instantly knocked back.

“There are far too many cars, on different nights, parked around the campsite for those people to all be sleeping in the little token sleeping tents at the back of the main structure.

“Why was the council permit issued and under what conditions?’’

According to the DSE web site: “recreational pursuits and club activities are generally permitted in state forest … however, special conditions may apply in some zones and permits are required for club and large scale events (generally greater than 25 people).

http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/09/13/538471_latest-news.html

TAXPAYER-OWNED native forest logging company VicForests has recorded another financial loss.

Environment groups and Greens have said it is “staggering that VicForests gets free land and trees to cut down but still manages to make a loss” and it would be cheaper to send its employees “to Bali to retire” than to keep the entity alive.

But VicForests says it is looking to the “future after a challenging year” and blamed the high Aussie dollar, global economic conditions and legal expenses for the loss.

The 2011-12 financial year is set to be the fifth running VicForests has failed to return any money to the taxpayer.

VicForests clearfells state forest which it sells for around $130 million most years – just less than $650 million in the past five years.

It has about 120 employees and will not be affected by recent Victorian Government cuts which savaged the Department of Primary Industries and TAFEs as it is considered a separate company – but Weekly Times Now has learned those being offered redundancies at the DPI have been encouraged to apply to government be “Forest protest managers”.

VicForests has lost money in three of the past six financial years.

Environment East Gippsland coordinator Jill Redwood said VicForests was a “taxpayer-funded work for the dole scheme”.

“At $130 million (worth of) taxpayer gift a year for 120 employees . . . we’re better off sending every person to Bali to retire than sending them out there to destroy our forests. The employment is miniscule, less than 1 per cent of the employment in East Gippsland (one of VicForests’ two major harvest areas).”

VicForests lost a court case to Environment East Gippsland when it was found to have planned to log threaten species habatit.

It settled out of court last month on charges of logging rainforest laid by the Department of Sustainability and Environment.

VicForests faces another legal battle in the current financial year as green group My Environment appeals VicForests  right to log what the group says is habitat for Victoria’s animal emblem, the endangered Leadbeater’s Possum.

The group lost its initial judgement against VicForests in the 2011-12 financial year.

VicForests chief Robert Green said 2011-12 had been difficult financially “for many industries”.

“Our legal expenses were significant and, despite being awarded costs when the Supreme Court dismissed proceedings brought by an environment group in March, we do not expect to recover much of the expense incurred,” Mr Green said.

“Government support, an enthusiastic new VicForests’ board and further investment by the private sector indicates the future remains healthy for the industry, and the thousands of jobs it provides in rural and metropolitan areas.”

Greens Senator Richard Di Natale said it was “economic lunacy” that “Victorians are actually paying Vicforests to raze our precious native forests and exterminate the Leadbeaters possum, the state’s faunal emblem”.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/a-new-home-for-you-possums/story-fn6bfkm6-1226273123396

• State Wide
• From: Herald Sun
• February 17, 2012 12:00AM

The endangered Leadbeater’s possum. Picture: Jay Town Herald Sun

The possums, two young males and an adult female, were found last week and taken to Healesville Sanctuary.

The move follows work by volunteers from the Friends of the Leadbeaters groups, who braved weather extremes over the past three winters to feed, monitor and ensure the animals’ survival.

Department of Sustainability and Environment project leader Bram Mason said an extensive search confirmed only three possums remained from the colony estimated at 300-plus before Black Saturday.

Healesville Sanctuary director Glen Holland said the possums had settled in.

“Nocturnal video footage shows them eating well and exploring their new environment,” Mr Holland said.