WITH one hand on a blackened stick and the other gripping the ladder tightly, Steve Robertson carefully examines the "nest box" in front of him. He has just attached it to a snow gum high up on a burnt mountain plateau, and now it is time to add the finishing touches.
He unscrews the lid of a white tub he has carried up the ladder and pokes the stick around inside it. When he pulls the stick out, one end is covered in creamed honey, which he then smears over the lid of the grey plastic box and around the small hole on its right-hand side.
It might work well on fresh bread or toast, but creamed honey also seems to work well when it comes to feeding the Leadbeater's possum, the state's faunal emblem. The tiny marsupial has long been considered endangered, but it is now believed the February 7 bushfires killed a significant number of possums, elevating the threat to the species.
So it is now time for special measures, including creamed honey, new plastic nest boxes, infra-red monitoring cameras and feed stations stocked with mealworms and fly pupae.
Before the fires, Victoria had three known populations of Leadbeater's possums and an estimated total population of fewer than 3000. But two of the three regions home to the possums, the Lake Mountain plateau and the central highlands around Toolangi and Marysville, were badly hit by the fires, and urgent recovery works are now under way to shelter, feed and monitor the surviving animals.
An estimated 50-60 per cent of their "home range", including 95 per cent of the Lake Mountain plateau above Marysville, was burnt. The third population, at Yellingbo, was unaffected. It is not yet known how the central highlands population, the biggest group, faired.
An estimated 100 to 300 Leadbeater's possums lived at Lake Mountain. Six years ago, 30 nest boxes were installed for them to sleep and shelter in. The boxes were attached to trees about three metres above the ground. The boxes worked, because possums had built elaborate nests in all bar two of them.
But when fire roared across Lake Mountain 28 of the 30 boxes were incinerated or badly damaged. At some locations, all that was left was a collection of screws on the ground.
The Age visited several box sites this week with Parks Victoria ranger Jo Antrobus, who is co-ordinating the Leadbeater's programs.
At one location the lid of a burnt box hangs incongruously from a tree trunk. It is connected to a small piece of timber still attached to the tree. On the ground below is a brown clump that looks like a bird's nest, but is actually some of the nest that would have been in a box above.
Just four surviving animals have been found on Lake Mountain since the fire. "I suspect there'll be low numbers of survivors, just given the fire intensity up there, and the lack of vegetation, lack of canopy and lack of food," Mrs Antrobus said. "Because that's the next challenge, for those animals that have survived the fire, they've now got to survive in heavily burnt habitat, at greater risk of predators and potential food shortages over winter, particularly the snow season."
She and her team are working to replace nest boxes at Lake Mountain — 37 are now in place — replenish feed stations and perform other tasks to try to protect the vulnerable possums. "It's extremely important," she says. "The surviving animals, I guess, are the key to the species recolonising the area. So it's extremely important that they survive, if at all possible, particularly the colony — the breeding pair are of particular importance to us."
? The Leadbeater's possum is Victoria's faunal emblem. It is found only in Victoria.
? The possum was thought to be extinct until rediscovered near Marysville in 1961.
?Kilmore-Murrindindi south fire burnt 50-60 per cent of its home range.
? There are three known populations in Victoria, at Lake Mountain, in the Central Highlands around Toolangi and Warburton, and at Yellingbo.
? The possum's population is estimated to be fewer than 3000.
SOURCE: Parks Victoria, Dr Dan Harley