He’s awaiting the first photo – the specialty boxes have only been set up for a month, and it takes the small marsupials some time to chew the opening to the right size and make a nest inside.

But the cameras going live marked major progress in the Albury Conservation Company’s campaign to monitor and protect the species.

Mr Niedra, the ACC co-ordinator, said more than 600 hollow-bearing trees had been mapped across Thurgoona-Wirlinga in the past two years, with the new boxes to add another piece to the puzzle.

“We already know squirrel gliders are in the area; what we need to find out is how the population is tracking across the landscape,” he said.

“There’s varying reports of how quickly squirrel gliders occupy nest boxes, and if these work, one of the things they will tell us is how long it takes them to occupy boxes.”

Bruce Dyce is not so quietly confident the nest boxes will provide results.

The Thurgoona Men’s Shed president and his members have been creating nest boxes for the ACC since 2013 and after creating more than 500 for a range of groups across the region, have it down to a fine art.

“After we made about 100 two years ago, Sam went around and tested ten boxes with his pole camera,” Mr Dyce said.

“Out of the 10, four had squirrel gliders living in them and in three other boxes they’d been in there and set up nests.

“That was basically a 70 per cent success rate.”

A number of alterations have been made to better attract the species – rubber baffles have stopped birds and feral bees getting in and mesh has been installed to help the gliders grip.

Mr Dyce said it took five tries to get the camera boxes perfect – linked to the Telstra 3G network, they show in real-time what is happening inside – and being solar-powered, the design could be a “world first”.

“The solar cells are a bit of a problem in the fog, but other than that, it’s working pretty well,” he said.

The 15 camera nest boxes were made possible by a $15,000 grant from the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife.

For Mr Niedra to be able to do more, with a long-term monitoring plan, he will need support.

“These camera nest boxes will be part of the broader monitoring plan, but the key element will be motion-sensor cameras that are put up ideally two times of the year at 80 to 100 sites,” he said.

“That’s our challenge currently; finding sufficient funds.”

Mr Niedra said research and planning was the make-or-break for nest box success.

“Where a lot of organisations and groups get it wrong is in lack of monitoring and maintenance,” he said.

“We don’t want to sit around a table talking bout it, we want to start rolling out this plan.”

Squirrel gliders were once the most common type of possum living on flat, fertile country like the land around Burrumbuttock and Wirlinga.

That’s no longer the case.

But researchers are seeing indications of an increase in populations, particularly across the NSW South-West slopes.

Damian Michael, an ANU senior research officer and board director of the Albury Conservation Company, said this extended to the Border, with data on exact numbers growing.

“We know from the nest boxes we have in Thurgoona, we do have a pretty good population of squirrel gliders,” he said.

“They are susceptible to the loss of hollow-bearing trees, which is occurring.”

ACC mapping – provided to Albury Council – shows the highest-density of hollow-bearing trees can be found at Bells Travelling Stock Reserve.

But at 3.5 trees per hectare, it’s still below the NSW government’s own benchmark for undisturbed woodland, of at least seven per hectare.

Dr Michael said this woodland, and regenerating bush, was habitat that couldn’t be substituted for anything.

“A lot of nest boxes are placed in forward tree plantings and it’s these FTPs that are getting removed for development,” he said.

As ACC co-ordinator Sam Niedra says, “if we start talking about nestboxes as a solution, we are kidding ourselves”.