An endangered squirrel glider was captured on the camera installed to survey the park’s fauna as part of a partnership between Parks Victoria and the Fauna Survey Group of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria (FNCV).

Two vulnerable brush-tailed phascogales were also detected, the first ever record of the species in the Grampians National Park and a nearby reserve. 

The survey focused on tree-dwelling mammals in the Grampians National Park and nearby reserves. Thirteen members of the Fauna Survey Group, with guidance from two rangers and an environmental scientist from Parks Victoria, set up the scientific survey project. 

Hair tubes and 18 remote cameras baited with peanut butter, oats and golden syrup were strategically placed in four reserves in and around the national park.

A Parks Victoria spokesman said the last recorded sighting of a squirrel glider in the Grampians was in 1984.

“Squirrel gliders are endangered in Victoria and distributed in small patches north of the Great Dividing Range from the northern tip of the Grampians National Park in the west to near Wodonga in the east,” the spokesman said. 

“Land clearing in the past has led to the populations around the Grampians being isolated from all other squirrel glider populations.”

The spokesman said Parks Victoria and the Fauna Survey Group were  planning future scientific surveys in parks across the state including the Mallee and Wilsons Promontory.