Media Release: Join GLENRAC for a Community Open Day AT Torrington

Plantings at Currys Gap SCA

19 June 2023

The culmination of GLENRAC’s project to provide habitat for Glossy Black Cockatoos and Squirrel Gliders will be celebrated at a Community Open Day, Thursday 22 June 2023 at Nomads Day Area, Torrington State Conservation Area (SCA).

Nestboxes installed at Torrington SCA

The event will be a fantastic opportunity to share the outcomes of the project” said Project Manager Christine Davis,“ with guest speakers including GLENRAC’s ecologist, Dr Mahri Koch and Sarah Caldwell, whose nursery at Mole River supplied a large proportion of the 6,000 native seedlings for the project”.

Additional native seedling suppliers included Kentucky Tree Nursery, Best Nursery (Inverell) and Gunimaa Native Nursery (Tenterfield).

Project activities included two workshops, held at Torrington and Bolivia in 2022, where locals constructed nest-boxes, with additional boxes being built locally, to total 50 artificial nest boxes created for squirrel gliders. These have been installed, along with 50 locally-designed and constructed “cockatoo tubes” in targeted locations within both Torrington and Curry Gap SCA’s and two private properties near Torrington.

On-going monitoring of the nest-boxes will provide New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and the Atlas of Living Australia with important data regarding local populations of these species.

“GLENRAC is very pleased to have been able to provide habitat, including feed trees, for these endangered native species in areas that were devastated by the Black Summer bushfires” said Christine Davis “and the high level of interest in the project, especially by the young people attending the community nestbox-building workshops, was especially gratifying”.

The Open Day will build the knowledge and understanding of participating and neighbouring landholders and the broader community about Bushfire recovery for target species and has been developed with the assistance of NPWS staff.

The project was funded by the Australian Government’s Bushfire Recovery for Wildlife and Habitat Community Grants Program.