SOURCE: The Guardian
DATE: November 30, 2017
SNIP: Decades of unsustainable logging has created an “extinction debt” in Victoria’s central highlands that will trigger an ecosystem-wide collapse within 50 years without urgent intervention from the state government, ecologists have warned.
According to modelling produced by Australian National University researchers Dr Emma Burns and Prof David Lindenmayer, there is a 92% chance the mountain ash forests will not be able to support its current ecosystem of arboreal animals, like the critically endangered leadbeater’s possum, by 2067.
If current logging practices continue, or if the forests experience another Black Saturday level bushfire, the likelihood of collapse approaches 100%.
[T]he problem is the product of historical logging practices and that no amount of future logging is compatible with the ecosystem’s survival.
