<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/may/01/after-25-years-logging-and-bushfires-a-greater-glider-has-been-spotted-in-deongwar-state-forest>
"It’s just after 8pm when Jess Lovegrove-Walsh, walking down a pitch-black fire
trail through bushland about 100km west of Brisbane, trains her spotlight on a
pair of laser-red eyes deep in the canopy.
“That’s a big long tail, it’s either a possum or a glider,” she yells, as a
fellow ecologist from the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, Paul
Revie, runs ahead with his camera.
“Is it this tree?” he asks from 100 metres down the track, shining a red
spotlight into the canopy. “No, deeper, a little further to the left,”
Lovegrove-Walsh says. “OK, got him,” Revie replies. “It’s a greater!”
They have spotted Australia’s largest flying marsupial: the endangered greater
glider. “They are these big graceful things that use their tails like a rudder,
dropping mid-flight right before they hit a tree,” Lovegrove-Walsh says.
Equipped with a “gliding membrane” – a loose fold of skin joining their elbows
and ankles – the possum-like animal, spanning more than a metre head to tail,
spends most nights gliding between trees eating gum leaves.
The last confirmed sighting here, in the Deongwar state forest on the lands of
the Dungibara people, was in the late 1990s. “It’s awesome to get confirmation
that they are still here after the logging and fires,” Revie says."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
