26 March 2025
This year we are launching the community engagement component of our new "The Tail of the Squirrel Glider" project! If we want to see threatened Squirrel Gliders in the Northern Grampians protected, we need the whole community to love them as much as we do. This means a key part of our project will be a community awareness and engagement program. We want to give everyone we can the chance to experience these amazing animals up close and contribute to their protection.
To that end, we will be running community night walks to spot gliders. The Friends of Grampians Gariwerd (FOGG) are the first community group who has started helping our survey team spot gliders in the northern Grampians area!
FOver the last week, we did 3 survey walks with FOGG members around Ledcourt. While we didn't get a Squirrel Glider at any of our sites, we did see heaps of other native nocturnal animals. At one of our sites, we saw a whopping 8 sugar gliders within a 1 km stretch of good quality roadside habitat! FOGG volunteer helped us spot the animals with a thermal scope and a red light torch, as well as record each animal we observed through our field app.
CThanks to our new red light torch, we got to watch the animals go about their business largely undisturbed - scratching the bark for sap, and catching bugs! Red light, with its lower intensity, is generally better for observing and interacting with nocturnal gliders because it is less disruptive to their vision and natural behavior compared to white light. Check out the cute clip below of a curious sugar glider giving us the sweetest little head tilts!
Follow us on our newsletter and social media, and come along to Squirrel Glider Project events, if you want to hear about opportunities to join on these night surveys!
Elia Pirtle
Landcare Facilitator and Communications Officer