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The Mahogany Glider (Petaurus gracilis) is a nocturnal, possum-like marsupial which is able to glide from tree to tree using skin flaps stretched out between its legs. It carries a formidable set of claws, which it needs to grasp onto its landing sites and to climb trunks for take-off.
The glider is officially recognised as an endangered species and was in fact considered extinct until it was rediscovered in 1989. Its habitat extends from Hull River in the north to Crystal Creek in the south - an area of approximately 720 sq.Km. in the lowland Wet Tropics of North Queensland. This habitat is now extremely fragmented by agricultural development. |
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Its diet consists largely of nectar and sap from flowering trees and so it needs a large and diverse home range to provide food all year round. This diet is supplemented by pollen, fruit, arthropods, arachnids, wattle exudates and honeydew. Their habitat usually includes areas of Melaleuca Forest and specialised Eucalypt and Acacia swampland communities. The female and her young need perhaps 30 hectares of forest to survive, and will rest during the day in one of perhaps a dozen hollow tree nests distributed on a seasonal circuit.
Chakoro Nature Reserve contains some glider habitat, and although it is not big enough on its own to support even one animal, it acts as a corridor between two larger blocks of habitat in National Parks. At its narrowest point, the corridor is only 90 metres wide with farms on each side. |
 Source : JCU |
The gliders' habitat is under great pressure from farmers clearing and draining their land for sugar cane and bananas, and is already extremely fragmented. Whilst there is a joint Federal-State acquisition program to buy up glider habitat for National Parks, there is also a Sugar Industry Infrastructure Package which pays for more, and bigger, drains which lower the watertable and make marginal farmland more viable. This is at the direct expense of the Mahogany Glider's habitat.
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