Wombat Talk
All things Wombats
Wombat Talk
Buried Alive: The Fight to Save Glenbog
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode, we chat with Andrew Wong, forest ecologist, activist, and Greater Glider expert from Wilderness Australia, as we head deep into the far southern highlands of NSW, where a cloud forest is about to be logged — and over 900 wombat burrows and 126 Greater Glider den trees are in the firing line. With logging machinery potentially weeks away, Andrew explains what makes Glenbog State Forest irreplaceable, why the rules designed to protect its wildlife are failing, and what you can do right now to stop it.
Thank you for joining us at Wombat Talk
Credits: Wombat Talk is presented by The Wombat Protection Society of Australia’s Chair Amanda Cox and Director Marie Wynan, lover of all things wombats
Special thanks to: Andrew Wong from Wilderness Australia
Sign our petition: https://c.org/YJJGTrpbbt
Hello, I am Marie Wyman.
SPEAKER_01And I am Amanda Cox. Welcome to Wombat Talk. Good morning, Marie. How are you? Good morning, Amanda. We're really excited today because we're talking about wombats in forests and particularly Glenbog. And Glenbog is a forest very, very dear to Marie's heart. And later on today, we're going to talk to Andrew Wong, an ecologist, who also finds Glenbog dear to his heart. But we thought we'd start by me asking Marie about how she has tried to protect Glenbog over many, many years.
SPEAKER_03Yes, started a long time ago. Well, we've been here for since 1990, and we saw the logging happening then. We saw all these trees that were marked. My husband Ray, he asked, and he goes, Why are these? Oh yeah, these are the trees that are not going to be touched. They are protected. And the next day we came, they were all gone. It was all gone. And then we saw like the devastation devastation after. Then in 2044, a Forestry Corporation contacted us because they were going to log close to our boundary. And we said at the time, well, there are so many wombat boroughs, what are you doing with them? And the ecologist at the time said to us, Oh, you know, they are just a common species, and you know, we don't need to do anything. And they said, We have a special license called collateral damage. And we were just like, Whoa, that's not good enough. These are homes, these are big generational old wombat burrows, they live in there. We asked them if we find the boroughs, can you protect them? Can you make sure that you don't touch them? And they said, yes, we can. And then we had the EPA actually came in and helped us at the time. And we made extra clauses into their contract. So that we had a written agreement already then saying, just saying that they're going to protect the entrances. The other thing was that they were going to contact us if they found any injured animals, and they were not going to drive at dusk and dawn into like doing pulling the logs out and all this. So we kind of thought, okay, great. We went out. We GPS marked 150 burrows, thinking it's all going to be good, they're all going to be safe. And the machinery came in, and my goodness, it was like a bomb hit in there. It was horrendous. It was the burrows were gone, we couldn't find it. They were like the a road was constructed right above a burrow. There were big boulders, they just like to push with bulldozer, push debris over on top of other burrows. There were piles and piles of debris right on top of it. We couldn't even get down to these burrows. It was so horrible. We found a dead wombat under logging debris. We found um one wombat had facial injury or head injury, and he had also now early signs of mange. So this is a couple of weeks after with that wombat with mange. So we kind of realized okay, mange is coming into the area as well after all this commotion, which makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Because it's highly stress-related immune system.
SPEAKER_03Exactly right. These were like the surviving animals. So we when we went out there, we went out every afternoon, we went out on weekends, and we were just trying to reopen as many boroughs as we could. So we just kind of went from one to another, and just poor husband had to dig, would pick and shovel, he was laying on the ground and it was snow and winter at a time. And we just tried to reopen as many boroughs as we possibly could. So yeah, it stopped for a while because we kind of go, hey, you're damaging everything. You you're not doing anything where you said you agree to. So there were some internal investigation, EPA came down, but then what happened afterwards were that okay, this wasn't good enough. You can't animal cruelty on that scale, it's unacceptable. And I think even the big bosses of forestry, yeah, they they could see the points. And we had many of the big bosses from Sydney and Bateman's Bay coming down here. We happen to, of course, always have orphans. Stick those orphans in the arms of these people, and they go, Yeah, this is what you're burying alive. We need to do something about it. And that's how our um guidelines, Glenborg guidelines got developed. So that was a written agreement of how to manage Wombat boroughs during logging.
SPEAKER_01Right. And and what did it basically say? Just summarize this what we call the Glenburg Agreement.
SPEAKER_03Yes. So it says that um before you construct a log dump. So I'm gonna explain what that is. That is so they they construct roads going into the forest, and then they construct this log dump that are like a couple of football fields of flattened ground that just make everything, just clear everything there, and that is where they pull all the timber into for the trucks to pick up, so they pile logs and things into there. So that is like the pickup point for the trucks. So they said in those log dumps, and when we're constructing roads, we will investigate to see if there are any burrows and see if there are bolt holes, and then we will mark them off, put uh their taping on to avoid them, or even move a dump point or move a road, which with our help, it did happen. We did move roads, we moved dump points to protect these burrows. So, but then in the rest of the forest, there was nothing, no protection whatsoever.
SPEAKER_01Right. Okay, and that was what, 2014?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, 15, but it's not 15. The Glenborough guidelines came on, like yeah, the logging was happening at 14.
SPEAKER_01So we're now we're now in 2026. Yeah. And just recently, forestry was about to start a compartment, a new compartment logging, but just prior to that, they did what they call road clearance.
SPEAKER_03Part of it was that they were also going to clear the roads.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03So the first thing we did, we went out along all those roads to mark GPS locate boroughs, and we said, okay, these boroughs need to be protected. Here they are. We provided a GPS location to them. Their road work was um to clear, to get a better view for seeing around corners, it was uh for fire management and to just clear the road. Problem was they went in there, they did not survey for greater gliders, they um they didn't touch the road surface, they did do it like a long way after after we complained about it. But what they did is they took the trees, so they've literally logged along the roads, and then they pull the debris in the corners where they were supposed to open up for better view around the corners. Well, they were they were stacked high with logging debris, and then they left their soak so-called what was far, like the low shrubs and all that sort of things nearby. That was left, they just took the big trees. On top of that, they took the trees on the national park side. This was like a a road, national parks on one side and state forest on the other. So they actually went in and took trees on the national park side. They can do certain amount of maters to the side, but it was so clear that the road was a mess afterwards, and they had just pulled out this triple deck of trucks, like I think there were 17, like uh up, all up, like an enormous amount of trees taken up from just the so-called road work.
SPEAKER_01Right, yeah, tidying up the roads. So after you'd seen that, that started you and Ray on the adventure you've been on for the last few months, which was going into the area or the compartment they're proposing to log and trying to or you succeeded in mapping the wombat boroughs. So tell me a little bit about that work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we knew we had a mapping area where they were going to, where the 515 hectares were. So we went in and just started mapping. We were just covering the ground back and forth, back and forth, searching for boroughs, and we GPS recorded it. We took a photo of each borough as well, and then putting it into WOMSAT and then extracting that data, and we sent that data to the Forestry Corporation, who had agreed that they were going to protect the boroughs. They said when the logging starts this year, 2026, uh, which was originally supposed to be like yeah, around January, they were supposed to start. They did agree, they said yes, we're going to implement the guidelines that we had written previously to protect the boroughs in the dump points and longer roads. And we said yes, and but also whatever we can find. At the time, I also questioned, I can't I knew there were a lot of greater gliders in there. I knew there were a lot, a lot of other species in there that we couldn't focus on everything. We and I didn't have like we certainly don't have the expertise on finding greater gliders or yellow belly gliders and the owls, powerful owls, and all these. We focused on wombats. And I was kind of I was ringing around all these people. Who do you know anybody who's an expert in greater glider? And then I got an email from Andrew, and he's been in Glenborg for years. It's like, where have you been all these years? Like the same thing. So there was a really good, really good um opportunity to work together. And very interestingly to we, we, and wombat protection and or what we do, we are in an animal sector. So it was very refreshing to get to work with a whole different, I shouldn't say industry, but a whole different area like Wilderness Australia. They're coming from this sort of thing at a different angle to us.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, but but one that can collaborate. Absolutely. If only that gets sorted and done. Just just before you get on to Andrew, one of the things that um you did is set up a protect Glenbog petition. Do you want to just talk about that? Because Andrew will also, when he talks to us, go in and and tell listeners uh a number of other people that they can contact to help save Glenbog, but just talk about your petition. We are desperate.
SPEAKER_03Our petition. Yeah, one by protection. So we did start a change.org and we are desperately wanting signatures. We just want public pressure. That is what's going to the forest is going to listen to. It is everybody speaking up, saying they don't want to see wombats being buried alive. It is cruel. It is unnecessary and it shouldn't happen. So we're police asking everybody, share far and wide. We need to get this uh petition going big time. We're nearly we're over 8,000 signatures. We need so much more than that. And I know this is a podcast, of course. So hopefully in six months' time we can say, oh, we did this podcast earlier, and now it's now they're not they're not coming in. We have saved it.
SPEAKER_01We hope we can say that. Wouldn't that be wonderful? And and look, hopefully we can, but at the moment, um it is an area that needs discussion. Uh it's the time where somebody can make a difference by just signing a petition and not feeling overwhelmed. It does matter. Your vote does count, and certainly Wombat Protection will be shoving those votes everywhere we can to tell everyone in authority people do not want this to happen. We are so excited today because we have a special guest, Andrew Wong, a forest ecologist and greater glider expert working with Wilderness Australia. Andrew, would you like to introduce yourself and what you do and what your passions are and how come we're linking a greater glider expert with wombats?
SPEAKER_00I'm Andrew Wong from Wilderness Australia. I've been a forest ecologist and a forest activist for about 35 years. So when I was a forest ecologist, I specialized in wildlife survey and particularly arboreal marsupials. That's tree-dwelling mammals like uh possums and gliders. And I combined those two uh kind of areas of work. Once I saw that uh a lot of the study sites that I was working in as a scientist were getting logged. And at some point I thought to myself, well, I can keep studying these animals as they disappear, or I can stop them from disappearing. And that's when I shifted uh largely into activism.
SPEAKER_01Fantastic. And and what you're talking about right at the moment is a very special forest called Glenbog. Um, would you like to talk about your work in Glenbog and just give listeners a bit of an idea of where it is and why it's such a special forest, as are all the forests, but Glenbog's particularly special.
SPEAKER_00Glenbog State Forest is a really astonishing place. I think most people in Australia don't realise just how special and incredible some of our forests are. These are some of the biggest trees in the world. There's a bunch of high, high altitude or what's called cool temperate rainforest in a series of gullies at the top of the escarpment at the back of the Begar Valley. And in between those rainforest gullies are giant eucalypts dominated by brown barrels, eucalyptus fastidata. They can get up to 500 years old or possibly older. They can be uh maybe eight meters or nine meters in diameter. Uh and I mean they're just really incredible trees. And this is what we call a cloud forest. So cloud forests people normally think of a cloud forest as something in a tropical rainforest. And it's much rarer, but you can get cloud forests in temperate areas. And in Southeast Australia, there's only a few of them, and they're at the top of the eastern escarpment or the crest of the Great Dividing Range. And in Glenbog, we find both those geological features coexisting. So it it creates what's called orographic rainfall, uh, which is where the warm uh coastal breezes hit the escarpment and they get pushed upwards and they turn to cloud. And you get this thick fog regularly. Marie will know all about this living there. Absolutely. And the thick fog, the thick fog creates what's called canopy drip. So the trees act like a big sieve collecting water from the fog, and then it uh drips down onto the ground, and something like 50% of the water hitting the ground in these cloud forests can be from canopy drip. So not only does it get a lot more rain than the surrounding area, but but it gets double that from canopy drip. And that happens even during times of drought. So because this area is constantly uh receiving rain and canopy drip, giving it a moist microclimate uh throughout the year, but also through droughts, it creates what we call a refuge, a place where animals find a stronghold, even during drought, bushfire, climate change, and so on. And so we get these incredibly high numbers of all kinds of animals, but we're particularly interested right now in greater gliders and wombats.
SPEAKER_01That is amazing. You you explaining so beautifully how that forest is actually working and and needs its, I would assume, canopy to be able to work in the way that you're talking about. What happens in in logging? What happens to that canopy and that amazing interaction?
SPEAKER_00So they used to do logging mainly with bulldozers and chainsaws. So a bulldozer would drive through and clear a path, and a logger would walk through with a chainsaw and cut a tree down. That was bad enough. But these days it's worse. They've shifted to using these large heavy machines called harvesters. They're 30 ton or more in size. They have a big claw with a chainsaw attached. And these days the loggers don't even get out of the cabin. They just drive around uh and cut trees down uh from the cabin of this machine. They can go through trees in a matter of minutes that used to take them, I don't know, half an hour back in the old days. They will clear huge areas of forest in a day. I mean it's really quite astonishing to watch. So this harvester machine will uh grab a tree with its claw, the chainsaw will cut it off, and it'll felt to the ground, then it'll cut off the base, it'll cut off the crown, it'll strip all the bark, and it'll place it in a log pile to be picked up by something called a finger. And then it will take the crown of the tree or the branches, and it will spread those around the forest floor, and it'll drive over them, and you end up with this dense mat, a bit like a sponge, uh completely covering something, but it's made up of hundreds of tons of solid wood.
SPEAKER_01I assume this, you know, dense mat of mess that's been left is probably also suppressing grasses rather than promoting them. What what's your feeling about that?
SPEAKER_00I mean, we go and look at areas that have been logged years ago, and it still is covered with this mass of debris and almost no grass. And of course, where there are gaps and grass is regrown, it's in very different conditions to an old undisturbed forest. So they're different species of grass. And they're the grasses that like to colonize newly disturbed areas or what what are called first succession species. And it's probably different to the grasses that wombats like to eat. Marie, you've done a lot of work on the types of grasses that they prefer. Does that sound right to you?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00So when you walk through one of these uh freshly logged areas, uh I mean the pile of debris from these branches can be up to head height. And it's really densely packed because these 30, 40, 50 ton machines drive over the top of it, and it is so hard to walk through. I mean, I find it really, really difficult. Now, I have much longer legs than a wombat does. So you can imagine how much trouble a wombat has getting through that kind of environment. It basically turns what was a an at least somewhat open forest environment, probably riddled with a network of little wombat pathways that they've constructed over years, maybe over generations. It replaces that with what is essentially a labyrinth of debris, impassable, impenetrable vegetation. So even if there is grass there, how is a wombat going to find it? And of course, we know that animals they always seek out an environment in which it's easy to get food. I mean, life is hard when you're a wild animal, and you can't be doing vast amounts of work for small amounts of food. So if it's too much work uh to to get to that grass, it is quite possible for an animal to starve to death, worst case scenario, whilst they're wandering around looking for food. And uh if not worst case scenario, at the very least, they'll be running low on energy and getting sick uh and stressed just because it's such a marginal habitat and so difficult to find anything to eat. And even if you can imagine that a wombat could survive in an environment like that, they probably can't breed. And so short term, there'll still be a few wombats, but long term we're going to see the population crash and probably go back to close to zero. And Marie, I think that's what you found when you went back and looked at previous logging.
SPEAKER_03It it was interesting. We like what we found too that that that whole network of boroughs that they rely on, it wasn't there anymore. We found that those boroughs that were totally gone, it was like the boroughs had never been there. The wombs that came back in and investigated, they didn't even try to reopen any of those boroughs. We found one active borough and it was right at the boundary of the logged area, and you could see clear tracks leading out of the logged area into undisturbed forest. There was one particular borough that we only could partly open because of that incredible heavy debris. It was just slapped on top. So Ronnie was literally laying upside down and digging up to just open enough that a wombat could escape if he was in there. But now when we went back there 14 years later, 12 years later, they hadn't even attempted to reopen that and actually live in there. It's like they'd done a bit of scratching, they didn't even bother doing proper bolt holes. It's like they didn't want to be there. The grass. I mean, what what we found is all these poles like Andrew just talked about, they're still there 12 years down the track. And the canopy is really, really low. On the few places where there were regrowth, the canoper was really low and the grasses had all changed. It was like fireweed and thistle. There were there were food that the ones that do not prefer to eat or that won't eat.
SPEAKER_01Right. So Andrew, you've been an activist, and with your this is your turn to get in your greater gliders. But but I'm manipulating you because I want to know how you got better protection for greater gliders than we have for wombats at the moment.
SPEAKER_00Well the difference between the two species is greater gliders are endangered. And then those wombats are considered to be common. And so the first thing that will bother anybody who cares about animals is that only animals that are considered threatened, that is, either vulnerable or endangered or critically endangered, get any serious protections. It's considered acceptable that most other species will basically die in large numbers, and that's, I guess, considered the price of doing business. And uh so we have focused to date on these threatened species. So greater gliders has been the one we've chosen because they're relatively easy to find. They're like koalas, they eat eucalyptus leaves, they are fairly low energy and so they tend to sit still, unlike some of the other species, like yellow-bellied gliders, which zoom around the canopy, or owls which fly around. Grater gliders will tend to sit there and look at you. So we've we've picked those just because it's easier to find them. And under New South Wales logging rules, because they're an endangered species, they get protections. And in this case, they live in trees called den trees. These are big old hollow trees, at least a hundred years old, and they live inside the hollow, and that's called their den. And when you find a den tree, 50 metres radius around it gets excluded from logging on a more or less permanent basis. So we've spent our time going out at night, mainly with a spotlight, and looking for these animals coming out of their trees. And then we record them on a government database called ByNet, and then legally, Forestry Corporation, who manage the logging in this area, must protect those areas. So far, in the 515-hectare area that's proposed for logging right now in Glenbog, we've found 122 dentries of Gratogliders.
SPEAKER_03And how many did a forestry corporation found?
SPEAKER_00Forestry Corporation are required to go in and do exactly the same sort of work that we're doing, but they only found four.
SPEAKER_01That's a staggering difference. And also, you know, my maths is not fantastic, but wouldn't you say, with the number of dentries you found and the exclusion zones that technically should be around there, doesn't that almost say that compartment shouldn't be logged purely on the basis of greater gliders alone? Or is that not right?
SPEAKER_00Well, it looks like Swiss cheese when you look at it on a map. It would be very difficult to log, but they have told us that they intend to still log.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And this is despite them accepting all of our records. Uh they know not just that there's a lot of greater gliders there, but all kinds of other species, not least of which are the incredible density of wombats that are there. They've accepted that all these animals are there in very high numbers, that uh they do deserve some sort of protection, and yet they're still going to go in and log. It's just really crazy to say that there's a high density of animals that need protection, and yet they're gonna log anyway.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you you you were talking about grocer gliders. I assume you were talking about them being registered on the red list as endangered. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00Or are there other Yeah, they're they're registered on the ISN red list. This is an international system, but they're also declared endangered under the EPBC Act, that's the federal environment legislation, so they're naturally endangered, and they're considered under the uh endangered under the Biodiversity Conservation Act of New South Wales. So they're listed as as threatened in three separate systems.
SPEAKER_01Right. And even though they have technically those wonderful levels of protection, we're still looking at the fact that they're likely to go and log in that compartment. How does that happen?
SPEAKER_00So you might think that the government is trying really hard to protect threatened species because every time they're ever asked by the media uh or or anywhere, what are you doing, they say, well, of course, we're we intend to protect these species and we have all these rules to protect them, we have all these policies, we have all this legislation. Okay, that all sounds good on paper. But when you go out into the forest and you look at what they're actually doing, for example, uh them finding four dentries out of 126, that's four plus our 122 is 126, that's 3% uh of the total dentries in that area. You start to realize that all their laws and policies and rules add up to protecting 3% of something that's a nationally endangered species, right? This is a species that should get more protection than anything else. Uh and they're only protecting 3% of it. So that's the same thing as saying they're going to destroy 97% of it. So I don't know about you, but when I think about protecting something, I don't think about destroying 97% of it. In fact, I would probably say that if they protected 97% and destroyed 3%, maybe you could get away with calling that protection. But they're doing the exact opposite. And you think, well, how can this be? Well, well, of course, uh the government is just handing over uh responsibility to Forestry Corporation for executing all these policies and laws. And forestry corporations' main job is not to protect greater gliders, it's not to protect wombats, it's to lock their forest and sell the wood.
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_00They're not a wildlife conservation organization, they're a logging organization. They have a vested interest in cutting down as many trees as possible. They have a vested interest in finding the fewest grater glider den trees possible and the fewest wombat burrows possible. And so, of course, uh, when they're the primary organization given responsibility to go and find these features, they somehow fail to find any or they find very few. It's no surprise because they have a vested interest in not finding those features.
SPEAKER_03Is there a difference in methods of their approach to your approach or finding greater gliders?
SPEAKER_00So the rules which are set by the Environment Protection Authority, which is the regulator for logging, uh, Forestry Corporation are the managers for that logging, the rules are really quite minimal. So the rules for forestry corporations say that two people employed by Forestry Corporation must walk one kilometer along roads within that area, which is only a fraction of the roads that are in the proposed logging area, and they shine a torch around. And if they see a greater glider coming out of a hollow, they record it as a dentry. So they do for a kilometer uh on one night, and then they'll come back a couple of weeks later and do it a second time. So they do two nights with two people. They do this before they log, but the problem is that most roads uh create a light gap, and so you get this uh thick screen of regrowth trees along the roads. It's really, really hard to see through those with a spotlight. So when they walk along a kilometre of roads, they're probably covering maximum 10% of the area of a of a compartment, maybe only 5%, but they can only see a fraction of the trees through this screen of regrowth. So now let's say we're getting taking it down from 10% to 5% that they're looking at. Now they're only seeing the side of the tree that's facing the road. Of course, the other side, which is 50% of it, which the glider might come out of, they can't see it. So now you're taking it from 5% down to 2.5%. Now, that 2.5%, they glance at it for a few seconds as they walk past. Now, what are the chances of you seeing a greater glider pop out of a hollow at the exact few seconds that you're walking past? It's almost nil. So now we're taking 2.5% down to about, I don't know, 0.001% of the forest that they're really carefully looking at. So as a as a wildlife survey specialist, uh, we spent years and years trying to work out the best ways of finding wildlife. I mean, it's you've really got to put a lot of effort into it. And no, no ecologist on earth would look for greater gliders in the way that forestry corporations do it. It is a methodology that is designed not to find greater gliders. You compare it to the way that we do it, we will uh find all the greater gliders that we can when they're out feeding. So we spend hours each night finding those. We then come back the next day to where those greater gliders were recorded, and we walk around looking for potential den trees. So this is the big old trees that have hollows in them, and we record all these on a map. Will they come back that night and we'll stake out each one of those trees? We might come back to a single tree four, five, even six times until we're satisfied that there's no animal living in it. Um we could spend many hours in total uh on every single tree. So we do this vast amount of work uh compared to the mere seconds that Forestry Corporation will put into it. So uh it's no wonder that we're finding uh something like 20, 30 times the amount of dentries that they're finding.
SPEAKER_01It it astounds me. It's a little bit like um, you know, making the cat look after the mouse.
SPEAKER_00And the thing that's embarrassing to government is that citizen scientists are doing environmental protection the way government claims that their own agencies are doing it. We're really showing them how it should be done. And if government would do it the way that the community volunteers are doing it, I think some of those species might have a chance of surviving.
SPEAKER_01What um what other species um are out there in Glenborg?
SPEAKER_00There are a couple of threatened glider species in the far southeast of New South Wales. Greater gliders are one, but yellow belly gliders are the other. They're usually a more coastal species, so they're considered vulnerable. I personally think they should be considered endangered, uh, just like grater gliders are. They're really their numbers are trashing, uh, combination of logging and climate change and bushfires mainly. And Glenbog is the only place I know in southern New South Wales that has a high density of both gratogliders and yellow-bellied gliders. It's really, really rare. They're commingling. So that instantly tells you it's an incredibly special place. Then there are a number of owl species, which are also threatened, uh, which feed on gratogliders and yellow-bellied gliders. So, of course, those owls are there. So those are powerful owls and sooty owls. And there are mast owls there as well. They're not recorded anywhere, but uh, I've heard them there doing our glider surveys. So there are uh three species of threatened owls there, and there's a whole lot of other birds. But the the place is just an incredible stronghold for birds. So a lot of birds, like uh possums and gliders, use tree hollows to nest in. And an example is the gang cockatoo, which is uh now listed as an endangered species, also just like the greater gliders. And we've seen gangang cockatoos in the proposed logging area, in big old trees, going in and out of tree hollows. We know they're nesting there. Any any uh evening that you're waiting around a potential den tree to spotlight it just as it's getting dark, you'll probably have up to a dozen gangang cockatoos squawking away and flying over your head as they go back to their nest tree uh at night. And I mean, there's just an amazing kind of uh number of them compared to most landscapes in the region. And there's a whole lot of other birds as well, so flame robins, for example, um, which also get protections under logging rules if you find the nest. There's you know an extraordinary number of those. Everywhere you go, there's just there's this incredible um cacophony of bird song. Um it's during the day. I mean, it's just amazingly filled with life, this this forest. Um Marie, you'd know this living on the side of the forest, you're surrounded by it.
SPEAKER_03It's amazing. It is absolutely the gangang conkato. Some of you are everywhere, they follow you.
SPEAKER_01And there's also a whole lot of other animals we haven't even spoken about. Um, I know Maria, you were or you or Rami, your partner was poking a stick down a burrow to try and work out how long that burrow was. And what happened?
SPEAKER_03Oh, the copperhead snake was starting to attack the stick. We've seen quite a few, but they're beautiful. I mean, the beautiful snakes, the copperheads, and we've seen tiger snake out there, and you know, they're all part of they're not threatened though, they're not protected, they don't want that, but and also the the the Cunningham skin and all the blotched blue tongues and yeah, longer birds, and we haven't even started on insects and plants and any of those sorts of things. I have a burning question for for Andrew, and it's about wombats, of course. How do you see wombats now after you've been into Glenbog compared to how you looked at it before?
SPEAKER_00Walking around a place like Glenbog with this incredible density of wombat burrows, so many of which are really big, old, established burrows, it makes you realise what a healthy population of wombats looks like. I mean, most people who have seen wombats uh are familiar with them from roadsides and farmland. And you get a certain image of kind of what wombats look like and how many there are and how they behave from that. But of course, we're seeing the most marginal of habitat when we're seeing those wombats. Uh wombats that are moving along roads generally uh dispersing, uh, or perhaps they've been forced out of their primary habitat. It's the same with farm animals, they're in suboptimal uh kind of grassland, and these are really the fringes of wombat society. And going around somewhere like Glenbog, you see wombats as they're meant to be. I mean, there's a wombat as they evolved over the last million years. It's a healthy, established population, and it's just so different to what you see along roadsides and farms.
SPEAKER_01I was wondering, Andrew, we understand that the Forestry Corporation loses money each year. I think it was 32 million last year. Is it just me, or or is that just an insane thing to be doing? Why not change that forest into national park?
SPEAKER_00So we used to have a big whaling industry in Australia. We don't do that anymore. I think most people would not accept the idea of commercial whaling. Well, what's the difference between that and forestry? I mean, native forest logging is an industry that's as obsolete as whaling, and yet it's still going. It has a long history. I mean, decades long. They've been, I think they started in the late 60s in New South Wales. And it there's really just a legacy there, which governments, I think, are wary about ending. The first government to end native forest logging in New South Wales is I guess they fear they're going to get punished at the ballot box. That's the main reason, in my opinion, that it hasn't been ended. There is no other reason for it to continue. There are something like 800 people directly employed by native forest logging in New South Wales. It's nothing. It's you you go to your local high school, there'll be as many kids there as there as there are people working in this industry statewide. It costs us $30 million a year on average to employ those people. That's really just a giant social security scheme. It does not produce housing material. That all comes from either steel or manufactured products from soft wood pine plantations. Almost all our wood comes from plantations, not native forest logging now. There is really no economic or employment reason to be continuing this industry at all. It's purely political why it hasn't been ended yet.
SPEAKER_01You've had some wins or or activists have had some wins, particularly New South Wales, with Talagander and Badger State Forests.
SPEAKER_00Um the reasons that saw Badger and Talagander protected all exist in Glenbog State Forest. So if you go north from Glenbog up along the crest of the Great Dividing Range, you'll reach Badger. And if you keep going north along the crest of the Great Dividing Range from there, you hit Talagander. So this is this chain of high elevation state forests that are along the top of the ranges, and this is Greater Glider primary habitat. So Glenbog is no different from the other two. So we're hoping that Forestry Corporation, who decided that they just couldn't log Talagander because we'd find enough greater gliders to stop them, and they couldn't log Badger because we'd find enough greater gliders there to stop them, will come to exactly the same conclusion in Glenbog. They seem intent for some reason still on logging Glenbog, despite the incredible densities of greater gliders that we're finding there. And I fear it's because they've driven they've drawn a line in Sand on this one. And they've just thought, well, they they got Telegander and then they got Badger and now they want Glenbog, and if we give them that, then they'll go for a fourth forest and a fifth forest and it'll be never ending. But of course, there's a limit to how many state forests there are up on top of the escarpment and and on the top of the range. In fact, there's only three of them. So we actually can't keep going because there's only three strongholds of the Greater Glider left in southern New South Wales, or three of them are in state forests, and there isn't a fourth one for us to go to.
SPEAKER_01No, and one would think that having that chain of protected forest areas, you know, created as a national park, would be, you know, something Australia should be really proud about.
SPEAKER_00Frontier Economics, uh, a big economics consultancy, did a study on the native forest industry in New South Wales when they found that the amount of money that they're subsidizing the industry, about $30 million a year, is about the amount of money it would cost to transition all of those workers across to other industries, particularly to the plantation industry. So they wouldn't lose any money at all to do exactly what you're saying, to protect all of these forests and turn them into national parks. Wouldn't it be an incredible legacy if we had this giant Greater Glider National Park? Just recently, the New South Wales government has announced their intent to create a great koala national park at the back of Coffs Harbour in northeast New South Wales. It will be the world's best koala park. Imagine if they also did the world's best gratiglider park, because we sometimes joke that that greater gliders, they're so similar to koalas, they're basically gliding koalas. So why don't we look after both those species?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, and and from our point of view too. How about the the thing that looks like a koala on four feet? Um the wombats, to to have that area protected for them would be such an amazing achievement, particularly when we now can actually demonstrate that logging uh removes um wombats from particular areas. I'd I'd like to hear from you and Marie, because I I know from Marie she's been jumping over rocks and logs and things, marking wombat burrows, but I hear you're almost as um, well, even more so uh goat-like than she is in terms of your ability to move through the forest. I'd just like you two to have a bit of a chat about what it takes to keep fit enough to do that.
SPEAKER_03I have a tea and all. Well, well, I can I it was funny when we were out there because Ray and I were out there searching for burrows and we were calling, oh, here is a burrow. And then we hear this echo long, long, long way in the distance. We thought, what was that? And then we go again. Oh, there's another echo. Someone is calling it up. And then we had been to that site, and there was like huge ravine. It was just like a really, really big dip, and we just kind of go, we're not going down there today. We approached it from the other end. And here comes Andrew, flying across the landscape through the ravine and up the hill. It was just like coming out of nowhere. That was amazing. It was like you're more comfortable gliding around in the forest than walking around in in on asphalt.
SPEAKER_00You know, the the truth is, and this is where forestry corporation fails horrendously. If you want to save wombats, you have to be like a wombat. You have to go where they go.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00If you want to save a greater glider, you've got to go where the greater gliders go. So there's really no choice for it but to throw yourself into the deep dark forest and push your way through night after night and day after day.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It can be hard work.
SPEAKER_03We have like this app and we can see where we are all the time, but still it feels like we are so deep into the forest. We are so in such a remote area. But then we're thinking, Andrew is out there at nighttime in pitch darkness. That's just like take it to a whole different level. And you often work on your own as well.
SPEAKER_00And you know, uh, I mean, one of the thoughts that crosses your mind when you when you're doing this is the further we get away from civilization, further we get away from towns and farmland or roads, deeper into the forest. Of course, uh from our perspective, we're getting further away from civilization, but from the perspective of the animals that we're surveying for, we're getting closer to to the heartland of their territory. So we're in the middle of a thriving metropolis.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh is is how I tend to look at it. It's just it's just a different type of metropolis. And yeah, yeah, I have to say I feel very at home when I'm in the middle of these forests. I mean, I'm surrounded by these tall trees that have kind of hollows going all the way up. And you might have gangames in one hollow and a sugar glider in the next hollow up and a greater glider in the hollow above that. It's like an apartment building in a city, and then you have this network of wombat burrows. It's it's like all these kind of ground-level uh apartments and houses, and there's all these pathways that the wombats and the wallabies and other animals use, uh, fallen logs. So it's like footpaths and roads, and they have particular patches of grass or particular trees or particular logs, in the case of some animals, where they like to eat. So it's a bit like restaurants or supermarkets. And so if you look at it the right way, you're walking through the middle of uh wildlife city.
SPEAKER_03That's a good way.
SPEAKER_01That's a beautiful analogy. I really like that.
SPEAKER_03And something I thought too when we were out there, because we got what surprised us is the amount of boroughs at at locations I would never think about. It's like they're really established in there, and we kind of go, we're looking at this enormous area, going like, oh, it's so thick in there, and sometimes we've been crawling through bush, and we kind of got like surely there wouldn't be any boroughs in here, but we go, well, we can't leave it. We're here, we must look for it. And sure enough, there are wombats. What are these wombas and mountain goat wombats? It's incredible how they can still find and make burrows in locations where you wouldn't expect.
SPEAKER_01I think Andrew was also doing some of this work um in the area that's potentially going to be logged.
SPEAKER_03We have now 901 because we found another one. We'll be going to go back. We will find more. So we've got over 900 boroughs together. But we will find more. We will find more.
SPEAKER_01And and so what will be the impact on those boroughs if the logging goes ahead?
SPEAKER_03Oh gosh. Well, from what we saw in 2014, it's a disaster. It's uh it's it's horrendous. It's just to find these locations where the boroughs were once, it's very difficult.
SPEAKER_00I mean, imagine for those of those of us who live in a in a city or a town, imagine if somebody came through with a bunch of giant machines and they took five out of every ten houses and covered them with concrete or or piles of dirt. So you couldn't get into them. The houses still existed, but they were buried. And then of the other five, uh four of those, they crushed every part of it of the house except for the front door, the equivalent of the borough. And then there would be one in ten houses left, freestanding, left in a wasteland of impenetrable rubble with no shops or you know, service stations or schools or anything else. And you took every person who used to live in that city, and you said, Okay, you you've got enough habitat there, you can go and live in in those you know few houses that are left. Okay, so that's pretty unimaginable uh for for people. Um so that's exactly the experience that wombats have. And then forestry say, well, you know, we're cutting down all the trees and and there's going to be more sunlight, so there'll be more grass, so so they'll be fine. Well, of course, it's it's not like that at all.
SPEAKER_03And think about that that individuals that actually get trapped in there are still alive. They might be injured or they might not be, but they're trapped and they can't get out. How long will it take for them to die? I mean, it depends on the size of the burrow, but the lack of oxygen, the stress, the dehydration. It's just a cruelty issue that it should not be accepted. It it shouldn't happen.
SPEAKER_00You you you told one particularly uh uh horrible kind of idea, this idea that the parents might be out of the burrow uh when when the machines come through and when uh when a when a burrow gets sealed up, the baby might still be in there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. They get separated. A mum goes off somewhere and the Joey is still in the borough, and the machinery comes in, and uh just the commotion of everything happening, they die to different boroughs and they get separated when get buried, or both of them, or yeah, the separation. And imagine if the mother dies, have a little Joey there sitting there at the at the borough, waiting for a mum who will never come back. There's nothing worse.
SPEAKER_00Imagine the experience of being a a a Joey down in the borough in the dark without your parent there and uh machine driving over the top. Imagine what it would sound like. And then it's cutting down trees that are many tons in weight, and every time they hit the ground, the booming and the shaking, it would sound like it was being bombed for hours. I mean, all day. And that's the last that's the last experience it would ever have before eventually it it died of uh thirst or starvation or suffocation.
SPEAKER_03Terrifying. Just it's too hard to think about, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01So who actually has the power to stop this? You know, who who should listeners direct their uh attention to?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the Forestry Corporation of New South Wales are the managers of those forests, they decide where to log. So the simple answer is they can decide not to log Gloombog. It's really easy for them to do. And if they refuse to make that decision, as they're currently telling us is the case, then they can be directed by someone in government. So it's a little bit unclear who would actually do that because of the way they've set it up. But it's uh it's a state-owned corporation, meaning it's independent from government but has a board. And the board is appointed by the shareholders. There are only two shareholders, and those are two government ministers. That's uh Daniel Mukey and Courtney Husos, the treasurer. And uh I forget what Courtney Husos does, but anyway, it involves forestry in some way. They're the shareholders. So they could, in theory, uh direct forestry corporation to to do things. And the person responsible for the land management aspect of what they do is Tara Moriarty, the agriculture minister. You would think that if she told them not to log in Glenbog, they wouldn't they would decide not to log there. And then lastly, there's Penny Sharp, who is the environment minister, who has long uh been a champion of environmental protection. And you would think that would mean that she would agree that Glenbog shouldn't be logged and and perhaps have a conversation with her colleagues in government uh to protect some of these high-density forests like like Glenbog, and there's a bunch up in northern New South Wales as well. But she doesn't seem to be doing that at all, doesn't seem to be willing to do it. Tara Moriarty doesn't seem to be willing to bring Forestry Corporation uh under control. So at this point, I would say we have to talk to all these people and tell them that the community wants these areas protected, they want mombats protected, they want gliders protected, and it's time for them to move out of these high conservation value forests uh in in the short term, move into uh other forests. There's really no low conservation value forests, but they could at least move into some of these regrowth forests where there are less animals and as fast as possible transition into a hundred percent plantation industry, and we just have to end native forest logging as soon as we can all together.
SPEAKER_03Ask, is there something, Andrew, that you want to say that we have missed?
SPEAKER_00You know, I'd like to say I'd like to ask the question of government. Your job is to uh represent the will of the public of New South Wales, and we know that most people want to protect wildlife. I mean, everybody loves wombats. You'll never find some somebody outside of uh a handful of farmers who hate wombats, right? And it's the same with greater gliders. So your job is to protect these animals. You say you're protecting these animals, but you're not. And yet the community is going in and doing the job that you're supposed to be doing. Why is it that you're outsourcing the role of government to volunteer members of the community? Uh how is it possible that underfunded members of the community are doing a far better job than this giant corporation who are under government control, forestry corporation? It's just astonishing the level of incompetence. I'll be blunt here, the level of incompetence of every layer of government who are supposed to be protecting wildlife and protecting the environment, as the voters in New South Wales almost universally want.
SPEAKER_03And that is it for this time. And now over to the bombats who will have the last say.