SYDNEY, March 7 (Xinhua) -- An Australian timber mill with over 250 employees is set to close its doors in order to save an endangered possum species.
The fate of Victoria's Heyfield Mill, one of the country's largest suppliers of hardwood timber, will be decided on Tuesday night at a crucial board meeting unless an agreement can be made with the Victorian Labor government.
Conservation groups have argued the Leadbeater Possum, the faunal emblem for the State of Victoria, is under severe threat within the mill's farming zone, with confirmation that many mountain ash trees have been cut down.
Now, with a 200-metre exclusion zone around each possum sighting, mill owners have been locked out of most of the Gippsland forests, abruptly halting their work and leading to diminished supplies.
Owners believed a 20-year contract with the government forged in 2014 would allow them access to more timber, but the agreement was never formally signed off by the previous state government.
With an initial offer of 80,000 cubic meters from the current government, mill owners had no choice but to announce the closure of the business, arguing the offer was 50,000 cubic meters short of the bare minimum needed to maintain operation.
A company spokesman described the mill as a "family business" with a further 1,000 people relying on the mill locally on top of the 250 workers.
"It's just a commercial reality, if we don't run two shifts we cannot afford to maintain our mill," he told News Ltd on Tuesday.
Environment groups maintain the mill's mass timber harvesting has for years far exceeded the forest's supply.
