TRANSCRIPT
It’s just after midnight in southwest Sydney.
Ecologists Dr Peter and Dr Judy Smith are slowly making their way through bushland in Wombeyan and Jenolan.
They’re shining spotlights through the branches of tall eucalypt trees in search of one of Australia’s most elusive animals.
The ecologists have been surveying Greater Gliders annually since 2015... after they started noticing a decline in the population.
“It built up over a few years when we’d been taking people out spotlighting and it was harder to find where the Greater Gliders were they weren't there in places we expected them to be.”
Greater Gliders are about the size of a cat with big round ears and long fluffy tails.
They’re found along eastern Australia from southern Queensland to the Victorian Central Highlands.
Once widespread, scientists estimate the population has fallen by about 80 per cent in just 20 years.
Darren Grover is the head of Regenerative Country at the World Wildlife Fund.
He says Greater Gliders are an indicator species, which means their rapid decline shows the health of Australian forests is likely deteriorating too.
“It would be a signal that other species maybe more obscure, or species that we don't know so much about, would also have been affected quite significantly, including to the point that they disappear from some parts of our forests.”
Greater Gliders are predominantly under threat from land clearing and forest destruction.
In 2019, the Black Summer bushfires burnt through a large percentage of forest in southeast Australia.
It was detrimental to many of Australia’s most vulnerable animals, including Greater Gliders, which rely on old-growth tree hollows for shelter that can take up to 400 years to form.
But results from Dr Judy and Dr Peter Smith’s most recent survey are promising.
“Good news and bad news, the severely burnt sites where they've been wiped out by the fires, there's still no sign of recovery, still no Greater Gliders. But where they had still been present after the fire, their numbers have actually boomed.”
The ecologists say another severe fire would be a major setback.
Megafires like Black Summer are supposed to be rare, but authorities are already preparing for what could be another severe bushfire season this year.
Darren Grover, from the World Wildlife Fund, says it has organisations like his on edge.
“The forests of eastern Australia, again, will be the areas that we are most concerned about. We've had three La Nina years, which have meant a lot of vegetation growth, so there is a lot of fuel. If we do get the hot and drier weather that we expect from an El Nino, it means that there will be a lot to burn sadly. So that's a big concern for us. And especially because those areas are only just recovering from Black Summer. So to have another devastating fire season will be in some instances, the last thing that these these species need.”
Australia has been described by scientists as one of the most diverse countries in the world when it comes to unique species.
According to Dr Rebecca Spindler from Bush Heritage Australia, the majority of Australia’s flowering plants and mammals are not found anywhere else.
"94% of our flowering plants are only found in Australia and 93% of our mammals are found only in Australia, birds are a little bit less, I think there are about 70 per cent. But still, we have so many species that once they’re lost from Australia, there's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to be able to bring them back.”
Yet the impacts of climate change are exacerbating a deterioration in Australia’s forests and Dr Peter Smith says we need to address rising temperatures to protect species like the Greater Glider.
“We're a bit worried that now we're going back into drought, that it might be a sort of boom-bust cycle, that the numbers are really built up, and that's fantastic. But if the drought conditions are prolonged, the numbers might drop again, because they're just not getting enough to feed on and if they're getting heat waves, they're dying in the heat waves.”
Dr Peter Smith says tackling that will require more than annual fire preparation.
“You can adapt as best you can. But really, the basic thing is to control climate change. If we don't do that, whatever other actions we take aren't going to be successful in the long term.”
Dr Rebecca Spindler agrees the country needs to pick up the pace.
“I see a great deal of hope but I also see a great deal of urgency, we all need to act much more effectively now, government, non-government and individuals. It’s a co-dependent relationship, we are profoundly reliant on the health of ecosystems to maintain a healthy thriving human society as well.”
She says this fire season will likely be a preview of what’s to come.
“It's really essential that we start changing that thinking but also developing the tools that we really need to understand when we need to intervene, and what are the key actions that we need to take, and I think there's probably a case for innovation and entrepreneurialism.”
For Dr Judy Smith, the loss of Australia’s biodiversity feels personal.
“I think it really guts you. We've seen them, we've had a lovely life watching them. So the next generations are coming up and they're not going to see the forest like we saw it and they're not going to see the gliders like we've seen them.”
