RATHER than just eagles or a rare albatross at Thurgoona golf club, there is a drive to encourage squirrel gliders.
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The course’s management has joined with the Albury Conservation Company to install 60 nesting boxes for the threatened species.
Club staff placed the refuges around the course this week, complementing 40 installed last year.
The community-based conservation company provided a $7000 grant to build the boxes and plant 1000 indigenous plants.
“The squirrel glider faces an uncertain future in Thurgoona, perhaps extinction, without such efforts,” conservation company co-ordinator Sam Niedra said.
Mr Niedra said the gliders nested in naturally occurring hollows in eucalypts, but big old trees were now rare.
That’s why it was vital to provide nesting boxes to allow gliders and raise their young “in relative safety”.
“On the ground they are at risk to cats and foxes, getting caught on barbed-wire fencing, or getting hit by cars,” Mr Niedra said.
Course superintendent Dean Lewis said all hollows in eucalyptus trees had been mapped.
“This is about finding a way to live harmoniously,” he said.
The program will be monitored to work out glider numbers.
The Thurgoona men’s shed is building 25 nests to be installed at Lake Hume in September as part of a Woolshed Thurgoona Landcare Group project.