PROTECTING THE SOUTHERN GREATER GLIDER
with Citizen Science
For six decades The Colong Foundation for Wilderness, now Wilderness Australia, has attracted people with a very personal relationship to the natural world. We are bushwalkers, bird watchers and naturalists who are committed to protecting the places we explore.
These places are often hard to get to. Our team have spent hundreds of days in the rain, wind and cold in a bid to protect these wild landscapes under threat. Along the way we pioneered a game-changing use of citizen science, focused on using NSW State logging rules to protect endangered species habitat. That work has saved two state forests from logging, and helped spark a state-wide movement of committed environmental activists and community members who have found and protected more than 2,000 greater glider den trees.
Watch our five-minute video from June 2026 about this work
Timeline of our Citizen Science Efforts
December 2025: Protecting wombats with Jarake Wildlife Sanctuary
In partnership with Jarake Wildlife Sanctuary, we have also been surveying for wombat burrows. Jarake have negotiated protections for burrows to avoid wombats being buried alive by logging operations. With our help they have found more than a thousand wombat burrow in a 500 hectare area.
December 2025: 130 Greater Glider den trees delays logging
We have been intensively surveying this proposed logging area for 18 months, finding over 130 den trees so far. Forestry Corporation have been delaying logging for 12 months based on our work.
November 2025: Protecting gang-gang cockatoo habitat
A new logging site in northern Glenbog included a large area of old growth forest. While surveying this area we came across this endangered gang-gang cockatoo examining a potential nest tree.
October 2024: Protecting Badja State Forest from being logged
Ella, Project Manager at Wilderness Australia, stands next to another greater glider den tree. Our surveys blanketed a second compartment in exclusion zones, after which they abandoned Badja. We learnt later that they halved the number of logging crews in the NSW South Coast following our Tallaganda and Badja campaigns, as they no longer had enough wood to continue at the previous level.
October 2024: Protecting Koalas in Badja State Forest
Forestry Corporation moved their attention to Badja State Forest, another greater glider stronghold just south of Tallaganda. We undertook more survey work and found this koala in the path of the logging. That immediately halted logging in the compartment.
June 2024: Den tree surveys stop logging in Tallaganda
We undertook further den tree surveys in southern Tallaganda, the next area that Forestry Corporation attempted to log. On almost the last night of our work we encountered this powerful owl eating a greater glider. Shortly after that night, due to our citizen science surveys, Forestry Corporation abandoned logging the whole of Tallaganda.
May 2024: Triggering the largest court case against Forestry Corp of NSW with citizen science
Bob Debus, Chair, Wilderness Australia visited Tallaganda and remembers being photographed with this magnificent tree which was recorded that night as a greater glider den tree. That record along with fifty others stopped logging at that site. Our work in northern Tallaganda led to the largest court case against Forestry Corporation of NSW in its history, led by the Environment Protection Authority in the NSW Land and Environment Court at the moment.