Why can’t Forestry find any gliders, when everyone else can?

It has all the ingredients of a Monty Python sketch: bureaucrats shuffling around a forest looking for nocturnal animals in the middle of the day.

It would be funny if it wasn’t true, and it didn’t have such lethal consequences for our native wildlife.

Looking for gliders.Credit: John Shakespeare

Southern greater gliders are one of the cutest critters in Australia. The marsupial was listed as vulnerable in 2016 and endangered in 2022, a frighteningly rapid decline.

Being endangered means gliders have greater protection. NSW Forestry Corp must follow special rules set by the state’s Environment Protection Authority.

Since 2018, in certain forests, Forestry has been required to conduct surveys to identify the hollow den trees where gliders live. There is a 50-metre exclusion on logging around any den tree because the best way to protect a glider is to protect its home.

On Monday the EPA updated its rules for greater gliders for the second time in three months. The background to what might seem like a dry policy announcement is almost farcical.

A southern greater glider is given a health check in Tallaganda National Park in NSW.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen.

The gliders typically come out within an hour of sunset, zip around the forest at night, and return to their homes at sunrise.

It emerged last year that Forestry was doing its wildlife surveys during the day and, surprise, surprise, not finding any greater gliders or den trees. A cynic might think Forestry didn’t want to find them.

In February, the EPA put a stop to this nonsense, and said Forestry must do its surveys for the nocturnal species at night, starting within one hour of sunset to increase the odds of seeing them leave their dens.

Yet during 243 surveys after this rule change, Forestry found only nine den trees and four potential den trees. Sure, 261 gliders were sighted, but their homes were not identified, and therefore not protected.

A nocturnal image of the endangered greater glider at Tallaganda state forest in NSW.

The reason? Public records show Forestry started more than three out of four surveys more than an hour after dark, sometimes after midnight, when the gliders had well and truly left their dens and were out foraging.

Even with a torch and a map, they couldn’t find what they were meant to be looking for. Meanwhile, citizen scientists had no problem.

Forestry Corp says this was not deliberate and it was always its intention to comply with regulations.

The latest is that the EPA has sided with Forestry that the requirement is only for the first survey of the night to start within a certain timeframe after sunset, and Forestry can run multiple surveys on the same night. The EPA said this was always its shared understanding with Forestry, but had not been worded clearly.

The EPA admitted that it was updating the rules because Forestry had advised them that the current conditions and lack of clarity would reduce the state’s wood supply.

To appease environmental concerns, the EPA has now mandated that the first of the evening’s searches must now start within half an hour of sunset, so more of the work gets done in the window when gliders leave their hollows.

General sightings of gliders throughout the evening will now also count, with a new 25-metre exclusion on any tree where a glider is seen. Effectively, it is trying to protect the glider by protecting its playground.

Citizen scientists can officially identify den trees, but public sightings of gliders in general may not count.

NSW Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty wants to keep the state’s forestry industry alive.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

No one is happy. Environmentalists say the EPA has weakened protections, while Forestry says it was given little notice and forced to stand down 15 operations on Monday to review the changes.

Greater gliders were one of the reasons Victoria finally shut down native forest logging, with citizen scientists leading the research. More recently, a dead greater glider was found next to a tree felled in the Yarra Ranges National Park, with the cause of death later being confirmed as blunt trauma.

NSW Forestry Corp is unprofitable, but the state government under Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty is committed to keeping it alive because of the importance of regional jobs. Forestry Corp directly employs 600 people.

Moriarty said she expected Forestry to operate by government rules and regulations, and she wanted the agency to work through the changes with the EPA quickly so the stood-down workers could get back to work.

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