Welcome to Friends of Leadbeater's Possum

We are the Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum Inc.

Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum Inc. was established in 2004 to give a voice to the amazing but elusive Leadbeater’s Possum.

It was in mid 2003 over a kitchen table that a youthful group of environmental scientists decided Leadbeater’s Possum needed better public representation. Through discussions with Dr David Lindenmayer and Julie Kirkwood of the Threatened Species Network, Sera Blair had learned that Leadbeater’s Possum had largely been forgotten by government and was hardly known to most Victorians. She and Pam Miskin, an Education Officer at Healesville Sanctuary, started rallying friends and colleagues to the cause. They convened a Recovery Workshop in Marysville which was attended by scientists, conservation organisations and representatives of Healesville Sanctuary and the relevant departments of the Victorian government.

Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum Inc. was formally incorporated in July 2004. An inaugural meeting was held on Tuesday, 7 September 2004 (Threatened Species Day) at which Sera was elected president.

Twelve months later the group’s first Annual General Meeting was held at Healesville Sanctuary with Eric Wilkinson as guest speaker.

The role of the group has always been to “advocate, educate and activate for Leadbeater’s Possum, Victoria’s critically endangered faunal emblem”.

Early on, the group engaged primarily in attending schools to inform students on the known history of the possum and its precarious situation, along with providing resources to enable students to continue to engage and learn. The late Pam Miskin, one time president, was a driving force in this campaign and travelled regularly around Melbourne in the first nine years of the group’s existence, attending primary schools.

The role of the group evolved in the first decade to provide support services to Zoos Victoria and volunteer opportunities to locate and install possum boxes around the Yarra Ranges and Central Highlands out of Healesville, as well as at Yellingbo Conservation Reserve.

The group began to provide merchandise in the form of clothing (t-shirts, vests and beanies), as well as keychains, brooches, self-adhesive ‘stickers’ and books.

Upon establishing a website, the group was able to gain greater reach providing information and resources, and merchandise. The merchandise offering continued to grow, including cards, knitting kits, posters, jewellery, olive oil, cookie cutters and tea-towels.

By now the group was gaining attention and seeking out grant opportunities to financially support its activities. It was through the successful tender for a grant in 2012 that the Nesting Box program was able to be increased.

The group then celebrated its 10 year anniversary in 2014.

Then, in mid 2017, the group was approached to become the lead plaintiff in a court case being developed by Environmental Justice Australia (EJA) against Victoria’s state owned logging agency, VicForests. In November 2017 the case “Freinds of Leadbeater’s Possum Inc. vs VicForests” commenced in the Federal Court of Australia in Williams Street, Melbourne. The case shone a light on many of the logging practices in place in Victoria, where the federal Environmental Protection Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act interfaced with Regional Forestry Agreements (RFAs) and Victorian environmental laws that allowed commercial logging in Leadbeater’s Possum habitat.