In March 2023, we asked for your help on our campaign calling on the Victorian Government to cancel the planned burns of the Stathbogie State Forest to protect the nationally endangered Southern Greater Glider. 

The Issue: 

Strathbogie State Forest was recently declared an Immediate Protection Area by the Victorian Government in recognition of it’s importance for protecting the nationally endangered Southern Greater Glider. 

Despite this, planned burns by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) will degrade upwards of 1300 hectares of crucial habitat in the Strathbogie Forest, this year alone. 400 threatened Southern Greater Gliders are expected to perish in the burns.

Research and modeling by DEECA is inadequate.  The decision to burn habitat without oversight will put endangered species at risk of extinction. We must act now.

The Petition: 

We the undersigned, fully support the cancellation of planned burns in Stathbogie State Forest and have serious concerns for the nationally endangered Southern Greater Gliders that currently call the forest home.  

Seventy-four per cent of the Strathbogie Ranges have been cleared for animal agriculture and forestry since European colonisation.  This represents an estimated loss of at least 66,000 Southern Greater Gliders.  Overall populations have declined 80% in the past 20 years.

In 2015, volunteers estimated that a single planned burn at Tames Rd in Strathbogie State Forest led to the death of 100 - 240 individual Gliders.  This year the death toll is expected to double.

The government acknowledges the threatened status of the Greater Glider and in 2019, declared Strathbogie State Forest an Immediate Protection Area.  The planned burning of crucial habitat contravenes these important protections. 

We can't imagine Victoria without the Southern Greater Glider.  Please support our calls to immediately cancel the burns while a thorough, evidence based assessment of the impact to Greater Gliders is established. 

The Announcement: 

GOOD NEWS! The burn in the forest at Lima East-Mt Albert has been pulled from the Government’s public 10 day watch list. For once the cooler and wetter weather is working in our favour, too.

While it could possibly still be rescheduled, the window for the approved burn season is now very small. We have been working busily behind the scenes with stakeholders and ecologists to consider the details of the burn on the Commonwealth level too, considering the Southern Greater Glider is endangered.

Photo: Doug Gimesy