Helping The Endangered Mahogany Glider

An elusive and endangered species, the mahogany glider is receiving new hope thanks to a collaborative conservation effort underway in North Queensland. The project, centred south of Ingham, is helping to link critical glider habitat while also delivering rare sightings of the species in the wild.

Indigenous ranger Chris Muriata is one of the few people lucky enough to see a mahogany glider in its natural habitat.

“To finally see one – it made me happy,” he says.

“It was in vegetation at the southern end of a glider pole array we were monitoring at Lily Creek near Cardwell. We’ve been working on mahogany glider projects for years – since Cyclone Yasi in 2011 when we put den boxes and cameras in trees. More recently, we’ve been part of monitoring programs. Still, to actually see one of these gliders is rare.”

Chris and his fellow Girringun Indigenous Rangers are now working alongside Terrain NRM on a new glider initiative, which focuses on removing invasive vines and woody weeds from forested corridors along creeks in cane-growing areas. This habitat restoration work is designed to support small, vulnerable populations of mahogany gliders living on the fringes of farmland near Yuruga and Bambaroo.

The project also builds on four years of monitoring, with the installation of new wildlife cameras helping to track the presence of gliders and assess habitat use.

Terrain NRM’s Evizel Seymour says the goal is to create a functional corridor between coastal glider habitats and the foothills of nearby national parks.

“We want this to be a functional corridor for mahogany gliders,” she explains.

“This is a new project in amongst a tapestry of projects that have helped mahogany gliders by increasing woodland habitat and bridging gaps in habitat through tree-planting projects, installing glider poles at roads, and replacing the top two strands of barbed wire in farm fences with barbless wire so gliders don’t get caught up in them.

“There has also been monitoring work and research to learn more about this species — to better understand the boundaries of mahogany glider habitat, where the remaining small populations live, how their genetic health is going, and how we can best help them to survive.”

Mahogany gliders are listed as endangered and are only found in a narrow range between Tully and Ollera Creek, north of Townsville. The last population estimate — between 1,500 and 2,000 individuals — dates back to surveys conducted in the 1990s, before much of their habitat was damaged by Cyclone Yasi in 2011.

So far, the project’s motion-sensing cameras have captured two mahogany gliders in the early morning hours — a promising sign.

“The cameras were up for six weeks,” Evizel said.

“We saw one mahogany glider at about 3 a.m. on four or five nights. It was active in a thin corridor of trees bordering a creek and cane land, a place where they haven’t been recorded on camera before. We saw another mahogany glider once, at a creekside area further north.”

The project, titled Keeping Country Connected for Mahogany Gliders, is funded through the Queensland Government’s Threatened Species Recovery Action Grants program.

The work is a partnership between Terrain NRM, Girringun and Nywaigi Indigenous Rangers, Hinchinbrook Shire Council, and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. The next stage of weed removal and habitat improvement will begin in the coming months, and further camera monitoring is planned for later this year.