2022-07-05
The federal Environment Minister has today listed the Greater Glider as endangeredunder the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act just 6 years after it was first listed as vulnerable. The Greater Glider announcement follows the uplisting of the Koala from vulnerable to endangered in February of this year and is an indication of the precarious state that Australian wildlife are in following decades of habitat destruction and compounded by the 2019/20 bushfires.
NSW Greens MP Sue Higginson and spokesperson for the environment said “Today’s announcement is a warning siren for the NSW Government that iconic and ecologically vital animal species are on the verge of extinction following years of logging, land clearing, predation by feral species and of course the catastrophic bushfires,”
“In NSW alone, annual land clearing rates are up 47% since the Coalition Government announced new land clearing codes in 2017 that equates to a shocking 224,700 hectares of woody vegetation being cleared. On agricultural lands, 52% of this woody vegetation clearing is classified as unexplained and shows that habitat loss is not being regulated by this Government,”
“The situation in our public state forests is even more dire where requirements for the retention of hollow bearing trees, the vital homes for the nocturnal Greater Glider, cannot be met because there are not enough hollow bearing trees in many areas slated for industrial scale logging operations,”
“Last year the Natural Resources Commission recommended to the Government that logging operations in burnt forests be changed to retain more hollow bearing trees and other large trees that would likely form hollows to replace older habitat trees. The Government has now sat on that report for almost a year without publicly releasing it or acting on the recommendations,”
“Koalas and Greater Gliders both rely on mature trees and abundant sources of eucalypt leaves for food, Koalas and Greater Gliders have been pushed to the brink of extinction through logging and land clearing,”
“The NSW Government should act immediately to transition out of native forest logging and fix the unexplained land clearing in NSW to ensure that our unique and iconic species are saved from extinction, we are in an extinction crisis and we need to respond accordingly” Ms Higginson said.