Dang at first I thought this was another story that just happened to be very similar, because I had never heard of "tree lobsters" before, but I had heard of the Lord Howe Island stick insect. But nah, just alternate names for the same creature. Anyway, I loved this quote from their Wikipedia article:

They scaled 120 metres of grassy, low-angled slope, but found only crickets.

You just know whoever wrote that was thinking how clever it was.

They tried to introduce them back to the island (which the islanders sort of went WTF why), which I don't think worked real well

This part doesn't seem to be correct. For starters, there is no indigenous population on Lord Howe Island, so the "islanders" aren't really a distinct population so much as Australians who just happen to live on the island.

There has been an ongoing effort to exterminate the rat population, which must be completed before they can go ahead with the reintroduction. This has worried some local residents because of fears the poisons etc. might harm children, pets, and native wildlife. In fact they had to remove a bunch of native birds from the wild to temporarily store them in captivity until the poison had broken down.

But as far as I can tell, the reintroduction of the species to the island is still planned, and is not particularly controversial.