The Forestry Corporation searched a NSW forest for greater gliders during the day, when the endangered animals would have been asleep.
But the Environment Protection Agency has slapped it with two successive 40-day stop work orders amid concerns over its efforts to preserve hollow den trees the gliders need to survive.
She noted many more hollow trees that might in fact be den trees had been retained.
Three conservation groups recently went into the forest and found 17 den trees over a small area, but their survey work was done from dusk into the night. They’ve welcomed the action by the EPA but say it’s time for the NSW government to intervene.
“However, it does require them to plan, implement and undertake forestry operations in a competent manner, including to find and protect all greater glider dens with 50-metre exclusion zones,” it said.
Am I interpreting this right? “We didn’t see any endangered species during our closed-eyes surveys, these forests are fair game” ?
I remember when Vicforests hired a firm I worked for to measure canopy loss. We used drones and satilite data.
Previously they just drove some analysts out to the most tree-covered areas and had them extrapolate from their position on the ground.
After we delivered our result to them, they went back to the old method.
They always play silly games like this. Then you end up with articles a decade later with headlines like “Australia’s deforestation worse than previously known.” With attached quotes like “we couldn’t have possibly known.”
What on Earth
Is that what possums look like in Australia?
Yes Australian possums are much cuter than American ones!
Although these are “Great Gliders”, big gliding possums. Very few Australians see them as they are rare and only live in forests.
These aren’t common ones but the 2 below are:
Common brushtail possum https://g.co/kgs/AZjnQA
Common ringtail possum https://g.co/kgs/NRNcE5
