The greater glider – that wideeyed, fluffy-tailed icon of Australia’s forests – is slipping towards extinction. Once common across eastern and south-eastern Australia, this gentle nocturnal glider has become a symbol of everything going wrong in our native forests: clearing, fragmentation and the ongoing logging of habitat that simply cannot be replaced.
Logging removes hollow-bearing trees. It fragments forests. It increases heat stress. It destroys refuges. There is no form of native forest logging that is compatible with the survival of a species that requires centuriesold trees.
The Australian Government has released a ‘Draft National Recovery Plan for the Greater Glider’. On paper, it contains many good intentions. But unless it squarely confronts the main threats – land clearing and native forest logging – it will remain a plan in name only. And unless the community speaks up before Friday 19th December, it may be adopted without the changes the greater glider urgently needs.
The decline of the greater glider has been catastrophic. The 2019–20 Black Summer bushfires burnt around 19 million hectares, destroying an estimated 28% of the species’ range in a single season.
Since then, surviving populations have been pushed into smaller, more isolated pockets of forest, with less food, fewer hollows and greater exposure to heat and predators.
Greater gliders depend on large, hollowbearing trees – often more than 150–250 years old – for shelter and nesting. These hollows don’t just provide a safe place to sleep; they provide shade and stable temperatures in a rapidly warming climate. Inside a live, hollow tree, temperatures can be up to 8°C cooler than the air outside. For a small, heatsensitive mammal covered in thick fur, those cool refuges are literally lifesaving.
In short: no big old trees, no greater gliders. The draft Recovery Plan proposes that “sustainable forestry” can co-exist with greater glider conservation. But for a species that depends on centuries-old hollow trees, this is a dangerous contradiction.
Artificial nest boxes are offered as technical fixes, but they are no substitute for intact forest. They do not replicate the cool, stable microclimates inside living trees, nor the rich network of hollows and food trees that healthy forests provide.
If we are serious about recovery, then the remaining native forests that still support greater gliders must be protected, not “managed” through ongoing industrial logging.
- A meaningful Recovery Plan must include strong, enforceable commitments to:
- Protect all remaining greater glider habitat from clearing and logging;
- Secure conservation status for unburnt refuges and high-quality habitat;
- Maintain and restore forest corridors so populations can reconnect and recover; and
- • Invest in active reforestation with native species to repair degraded forests and rebuild future hollow-bearing trees.
Right now, the government is asking for public feedback on the ‘Draft National Recovery Plan for the Greater Glider’. You don’t have to be an expert to make a submission. A short email in your own words is enough.
Public submissions close on Friday 19th December. Send your submission by email to: recoveryplans@dcceew.gov.au
