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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/10/endearing-and-fascinating-yellow-bellied-glider-faces-inexorable-slide-into-extinction>
"Australia’s most skilled aerial mammal, the yellow-bellied glider, is on an
“inexorable slide” to extinction as global heating creates more extreme
bushfires that are robbing the species of the food and tree hollows it relies
on to survive.
Thanks to large parachutes of skin stretching from their wrists to their
ankles, yellow-bellied gliders can travel up to 140 metres in a single jump,
the furthest of any Australian mammal, including the larger and better known
endangered greater glider.
Scientists studying the species said its characteristics – including a diet of
tree sap, nectar and insects, reliance on old trees with hollows for shelter
and nesting, and a tendency to live across a large “home range” – make it
especially vulnerable to the climate crisis.
They said fragmentation of the glider’s forest habitat, logged and cleared for
development, had already put pressure on “yellow-bellies” before the black
summer bushfires of 2019-20 scorched 41% of their habitat and pushed them on to
the national threatened species list in 2022.
Prof John Woinarski, an ecologist at Charles Darwin University and a leading
threatened species expert, said the glider was “sliding inexorably towards
extinction”.
“They need hollows to rest in during the day, but across Australia the number
of these old trees is declining rapidly through logging and fire,” he said.
“Many hollow-bearing species are in trouble – and the yellow-bellied gliders’
[decline is] more pronounced than the others.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
