Author: Clancy Barnard, Forests Campaigner

In state forests across NSW, citizen scientists are heading out into the scrub at night in search of den trees for the elusive Greater Glider before the logging trucks roll in. Every den tree found, secures a 50 metre buffer zone protected from logging.  

Greater Gliders were once a common sight in the forests of south-east NSW, but their populations have been devastated by logging, bushfires, fragmentation and climate change and they have been uplisted to endangered as a result. 

One of the most exciting things that has happened to me, since joining the NCC team as the forests campaigner, is seeing my first Greater Glider in the forest.  

Let me set the scene: It was dark, rainy, cold and I’d just slipped over. I looked up and I saw two bright lights I thought were stars peeking through the forest canopy... but then they moved.  

I could just make out the shape of an upside down glider looking at me. I shouted, “that’s a glider!” The veteran conservationist next to me replied, “that’s it!”  

The glider ran into its hollow and my colleague charged off through the scrub to get to the base of the tree and log the GPS. I followed slowly, pushing through the lantana and tripping again, before reaching a giant 200 plus year old tree that would have taken eight people to fully encircle it. 

Once my colleague confirmed it was recorded, I realised that this tree and 50 metres around it was now protected from logging. 

Over the past year citizen science has recorded 1338 glider dens in the same forests that Forestry Corporation only recorded 50. These are some of the most important forests for endangered greater gliders, as well as gang gang cockatoos and other hollow dependent species. 

And shockingly, our taxpayer funds are being used to cut them down and turn these invaluable forest ecosystems into woodchips, pallets and tomato stakes.  

Citizen science has saved tens of thousands of hectares across the state. 

In both Tallaganda and Badja state forests, citizen scientists created a mosaic of exclusion zones that ultimately led to the protection of over 30,000 hectares of forest. 

The same thing is playing out in Glenbog and Enfield state forests. 

I’m both excited by the potential citizen science has to protect critical habitat and I know it’s not enough. We need greater glider strongholds protected from logging altogether. 

That’s why we are identifying important forests to take off the logging schedule and put into the network of reserves. And we're working hard to end native forest logging throughout the state.