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Direct impacts of logging and forest management on the brush-tailed phascogalePhascogale tapoatafa and other arboreal marsupials in a jarrah forest of Western Australia
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Published:2004
Citation
Susan G. Rhind, 2004. "Direct impacts of logging and forest management on the brush-tailed phascogalePhascogale tapoatafa and other arboreal marsupials in a jarrah forest of Western Australia", Conservation of Australia's Forest Fauna, Daniel Lunney
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The direct impacts of logging on the arboreal, solitary brush-tailed phascogale were investigated in jarrah forest in south-western Australia. Individuals were monitored before, during and after logging in the Kingston Forest in 1995. The study was complicated by the effects of a drought, but sufficient radiotelemetry-based data were gathered to reveal a high level (31%) of foraging activity in logged areas, although negligible (1%) nesting in trees in logged areas. The most parsimonious explanation for the latter was that logging removed most hollow-bearing trees. Data concurrently collected on the number of possums found in the hollows of felled trees supported that view. Phascogale abundance declined throughout the logging study, but this was initially due to drought. When the research ended in 1997 a post-drought population recovery had occurred in the neighbouring unlogged area of Perup, but not in the logged area. No phascogales have been trapped by CALM since 1995 and only five have been seen during CALM spotlight monitoring (1995-2001) in Kingston and surrounding forests. Logging as conducted, coupled with management plans allowing logging of unlogged corridors/buffers, and a recutting rotation shorter than 120 years, would appear unlikely to provide for the long term hollow needs of arboreal marsupials in this area.
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