Leadbeater's Possum  |  

The frequency and intensity of wildfires are likely to increase under climate change scenarios; which predict increased rates of extreme climatic events (Lumsden et al. 2013 Baker et al. 2017).
The amount of logging to occur is determined by VicForests and has been reduced in recent years due to a policy of applying a 200m radius protection zone around new detections of Leadbeater s Possums within the harvestable area (VicForests 2017). 1.4 Climate Suspected Climate change may exacerbate existing change future threats.
The authors also postulated that activities such as planned burns may reduce the extent of fires; but that climate change effects may have the opposite effect.
It is also important to note that projections of the decline in hollow bearing trees are based on observed data to date; and thus cannot formally incorporate the effects of increasing changes in landscape context (Lindenmayer et al. 2018) or factors such as future climate change (Lindenmayer et al. 2012) both of which are expected to accelerate the loss of hollow bearing trees.
However; Lindenmayer and Sato (2018) note; as has the Committee above; that these estimates do not account for demonstrable increases in collapse rate of trees due to fire and logging in the surrounding landscape (Lindenmayer et al. 2018); nor the effect of climate change on drought and increased fire risk or regeneration potential of Ash (e.g.
The rate of collapse of hollow bearing trees is also influenced by the other main threats listed here; fire and logging (e.g.
Lentini et al. (2018) also suggest that the exposure of this population to wildfire and harvesting mean that its discovery does not substantially alter the risk of extinction for the species.
Temporal changes in the existing abundance and projected future abundance of large; old cavity trees in the Ash ecosystem in response to fire and logging.
Similar to the result described above; the landscape fire simulation modelling suggested that; on average; 20 percent of the 1939 ash stands may be affected by fire in the next 20 years with a worst case scenario of 50 percent of the resource being impacted.
Second; both modelled projections and weather observations over past decades show with a high degree of certainty that extreme fire weather will increase in frequency over the next three generations and beyond (Clarke et al. 2013 CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology 2015).
Estimates of risk of losses of HBT due to fire in the next three generations are thus likely to be greater than those based on observations of past fire frequencies.
It should also be noted that the added exposure to wind and drying can increase mortality and collapse rates not only of habitat trees left during the clearing; but also of trees in adjacent unlogged patches (Lindenmayer et al. 1997 Lindenmayer et al. 2016 Lindenmayer et al. 2018).
Second; both modelled projections and weather observations over past decades show with a high degree of certainty that extreme fire weather will increase in frequency over the next three generations and beyond (Clarke et al. 2013 CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology 2015).

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