Quolls need friends
Do you want to help save the Quoll?
Then read on.
After years of being officially threatened while being un-officially flattened, Spot-tailed Quolls now get a new altered but still inadequate protection plan under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.
The old measures allowed 50 protected sites in East Gippsland of up to 500 ha each which didn’t have to include where the quoll was found. This allowed the Department of Sustainability and Environment to declare a ‘protection site’ in the nearest reserve or park. There are 71 sites previously identified as quoll habitat here. Of these 21 only were in state forest (with one being as small as 3 ha!) and 50 in parks. But now they are ‘allowed’ a staggering 75 sites across its Victorian stronghold in East Gippsland. But many of those in state forest, have much less than 500 ha and it’s yet to be established if these need to be expanded to adhere to the new guidelines. It looks like there are at least four more which can be put on the map to protect 500 ha of good forest though. Quolls and Potoroos seem to have more success in protecting large chunks of forest than blockades. We just need to coax them into a hair tube.
So to that end, we are trying to organise a few folk to spend a week or two in East Gippsland setting out tubes to identify the little beasties. If this sounds like a good Summer or Autumn activity to you –
please get in touch with us.