An alarming report released by the Natural Resources Commission (NRC) in the leadup to National Threatened Species Day (today), identifies the extent of state forests occupied by endangered greater gliders has declined by two-thirds over 27 years, and within the remaining occupied habitat populations have collapsed by a similar amount.
The report identifies increasing temperatures due to climate change, wildfires and logging as all contributing to the rapid demise of greater gliders. Logging increases the risk of wildfires, while also releasing carbon to accelerate climate change.
‘Given the precipitous decline in greater glider populations the report recommends logging should be excluded from their home ranges, instead the NRC intend to continue logging their homes while they monitor them into extinction,’ North East Forest Alliance spokesperson Dailan Pugh said.
‘If we want to save greater gliders from extinction we must stop logging their homes now. Their decline is rapid and alarming, we have a choice to save them, but only if we act with urgency. They may not survive another decade of our abuse,’ Mr Pugh said.
Citizen science
‘Citizen scientists are the only thing standing in the way of the NSW government’s reckless intent to manage greater gliders to extinction,’ North Coast Environment Council spokesperson Susie Russell said.
‘Since citizen scientists began a concerted campaign to survey for greater glider den trees in August 2023 they have identified 2,327 dens, which require 50m exclusion areas, compared to some 130 identified by the Forestry Corporation.
‘Greater gliders have high fidelity to their home ranges of 1-3 hectares, within which they move between 3-20 den trees. While we are helping them, protecting one den tree in a home range is not enough,’ she said.
‘Our attempts to save greater gliders a den tree at a time will not save them from extinction as the Forestry Corporation continue to log many other dens, along with their mature feed trees.
‘Rather than protecting some of their den trees we must heed the scientists’ advice and protect their entire home ranges from logging if we want to give them the best chance of surviving the growing impacts of climate heating and wildfires,’ Ms Russell said.
‘Greater gliders are on an extinction trajectory due to logging. We must act urgently if we don’t want them to follow the fate of the thylacine.’
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