Stop Logging Glider Habitat
Industrial logging is driving the greater glider to extinction.
Once common across our forests, greater gliders are now an endangered species on the brink of collapse.
They will not survive if we continue with our state-sponsored destruction of their habitat.
Earlier this year, after vocal pushback against an attempt to remove the requirement to survey for gliders altogether, we secured new rules requiring nighttime surveys for greater gliders.
Forestry Corporation is now required to survey for greater glider den trees within 1 hour of sunset - when they are most active.
While inadequate, this was a small but significant victory in our fight to protect these endangered marsupials - better than the previous rules allowing them to survey for this nocturnal marsupial during the day.
However, the current rules merely require them to search 10% of a logging compartment at a time when gliders are likely to be active.
Enough of these ineffective surveys. Enough complex rules that are neither followed nor enforced. Enough state-sponsored destruction of glider habitat.
Forestry Corporation’s ineffective surveying proves that tinkering around the edges won't save the greater glider.
The only way we can effectively protect gliders and guarantee their continued survival is to stop logging their homes.
We call on the Minns Government to:
- End logging in NSW state native forest with high densities of, or otherwise of critical importance to, listed endangered species, particularly koalas and greater gliders.
- Accept and use community pre-logging forest survey findings to institute buffer zones
- Institute a 100m exclusion zone around any greater glider sighted within a state forest that is due to be logged.
- Direct the EPA to issue stop-work orders as soon as evidence emerges of gliders living within forests that are being logged.
- Increase the penalties for illegal logging activity, including the loss of licensing to repeat offenders.
- Update survey methods to include drone technology to accurately reflect density of endangered species
Twenty years ago, greater gliders were a common sight throughout NSW's forests. Now, they face extinction. Areas known to have high densities of gliders are being logged right now.
While Victoria and Western Australia have ended native forest logging, the least the NSW government can do is ensure that their state sponsorship of industrial logging doesn’t drive this iconic species to extinction.