BEAM Mitchell Environment Group and Biolinks Alliance are partnering to launch the Murchison Gap Greater Glider Biolink project, which builds on the highly successful community glider survey effort spearheaded by BEAM over the last four years.

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This biolink will allow greater gliders to expand south from the Tallarook Forest, where they are abundant, to the Mt Disappointment Forest, where their numbers are depleted. Murchison Gap is a narrow ridge of 400m elevation between the plateaux of the two forests, and runs for 10km from north to south, mostly along Horans Track and Murchison Spur Rd.

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Over 150 greater gliders were found in the Tallarook Forest during BEAM’s surveys over 2020 to 2024, making Tallarook Forest one of the greater glider hotspots of Victoria. This helped to stop native forest logging in the forest, and led to a Special Protection Zone being declared in the forest by the state government.

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With funding from the Capricorn Foundation, the Survey Stage (2024 and 2025) of this new project will allow BEAM and Biolinks Alliance to scale up the current community-led survey work to gain a clearer understanding of where greater gliders, and other arboreal mammals such as sugar gliders, koalas, ringtail possums and mountain brushtail possums, occur both within and between the Tallarook and Mt Disappointment Forests.

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This will allow identification of strategic priority areas for future habitat restoration works, such as nest box installation in areas where hollow availability appears to be a limiting factor, or revegetation for future connectivity across this landscape. Importantly, we will use this information to develop a detailed biolink plan to inform future priorities and to have a well-formed project to pitch to potential funders of the implementation stages of the project.

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The presence and abundance of other arboreal mammals will help us to assess the biodiversity levels across the two forests, enabling better planning for the ecological balance required for the greater gliders to prosper.

 

At this current Survey Stage of the project, we will carry out three key steps to gather the information required on glider distribution in the area:

1.    Day time habitat assessments on public and private land to identify areas of suitable foraging, and also denning habitat in hollow-bearing trees.

2.    Night time surveys to detect greater gliders and other arboreal mammals.

3.    Mapping presences and absences to inform next areas to investigate and understand what factors are limiting glider occurrence.

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The local community, land owners, public land managers, traditional owners and other environmental stakeholders will be engaged from the start of the project, and throughout its various stages. We will expand the survey effort including training up more volunteers to join the current volunteer teams. The training will expand the skills of community members in how to identify suitable glider habitat and how to survey for and record gliders.

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For more information or to get involved in the project, contact Paul Macgregor at BEAM, or Chris Pocknee at Biolinks Alliance

 

Published 30 September 2024​

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Photo: White-morph Greater Glider by Matt Wright, courtesy Biolinks Alliance.