Photo: Yass Men’s Shed members Tony Warren, Allan Carey and Ian Bluett
The Yass and Hall Men’s Sheds made 90 greater glider nest boxes by request for an Australian National University project.
PhD student Jenna Ridley is studying the refuge requirements and recommendations for post-fire management of greater gliders in Victoria under the supervision of Dr Kara Youngentob.
The Yass Men’s Shed responded to ANU’s request and asked the Hall Men’s Shed for aid splitting it down the middle and crafting 45 each.
Initially, Yass Men Shed made 12 nesting box prototypes using four different designs and varying amounts of insulation on differing sides of the box. Yass Men Shed President Peter Davidson said these were used at ANU to test the effect of different amounts of insulation on both heat and cold as greater gliders have a very narrow temperature tolerance.
The greater gliders are three species of large gliding marsupials all of which are found in eastern Australia.
Until 2020 they were considered to be one species, Petauroides Volans.
Their conservation status is currently ‘least concern’, which means the greater glider population is decreasing. During Australia’s 2019/2020 bushfires alone 30 per cent of their habitat was destroyed.
After the Men’s Shed made the initial dozen boxes ANU settled on a design after testing that they thought would be efficient in terms of the amount of work required, cost, weight, ease of installing it in a tree, and the amount of heat and cooling amelioration that it afforded the gliders.
ANU provided all the supplies with some difficulty last year through the NSW/ACT lockdown. The Men’s Shed spent a few months early last year fiddling with the experimental boxes and their designs.
“There was quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing because the designs changed as we were making them,” Peter said. “They were a bit complicated, made my brain fizz up.”
ANU then requested the 90 nesting boxes before Christmas with materials arriving in the following weeks.
Peter said it was difficult cutting the insulation and plywood because it’s a sandwich of 18mm plywood, a 9mm air gap with 20mm thickness of insulation, and a 4mm ply on top of that to construct the walls.
“Air is a great insulator, so trapping the air is important,” he said. “It had to be made pretty exactly and all of them had to be the same so their experiments can work properly.”
Peter, who has a background in horticulture and botany, is a keen birdwatcher and aided the research team in installing the nesting boxes at Tallaganda National Park last month.
“These sorts of PhDs are a lot of work, a lot of fieldwork in the middle of the night in the rain and cold,” he said. “It was an interesting project to be in on and it will be interesting to follow it through, help out where we can.”
By Brianna O’Rourke
