Meet the new parents: Pip and Milo in their hollow in May 2023. Photo: WWF-Australia.
Plenty of mums are run off their feet looking after their babies – and ‘Pip’ isn’t an exception.
The difference is, she’s a greater glider living in a tree’s hollow in Tallaganda Forest. And unlike you, she and her family are being watched by a 24/7 livestream.
Australian National University (ANU) research fellow Doctor Ana Gracanin’s livestream started beaming out to the world from a secret location within Tallaganda National Park, in southeast NSW, in 2024.
It’s been a window into the world of greater gliders, which are large gliding marsupials native to eastern Australia.
They use hollows (naturally forming holes in trees) as a safe place to sleep and breed.
The camera caught mum Pip and dad Milo with one joey, named Brimi, last year. Now, another small face has joined the family.
“It’s a symbol of hope [to see the joeys],” Dr Gracanin told Region.
“It’s been really nice to see the behaviours that we otherwise had no idea about. It’s been really fascinating to see how they raise their joey.”
The baby’s birthday isn’t known, but in August, Dr Gracanin noticed movement in Pip’s pouch on the livestream, which suggested a joey was inside.
She said the unnamed baby, like other joeys of the same age, had been “much more active” than Pip and Milo, but hadn’t ventured far from home.
“The joey will spend hours and hours of the night peering out of the hollow or the nest box – [they’re] looking down at the world, sometimes cheekily going to have a little explore but then always going back inside.”
Dr Gracanin said Pip had had at least one other baby before the study started, detected with a previous project, but this joey was a surprise.
“She may have had another one before that, but we definitely know that [she’s had joeys] for three years in a row.
“That’s a really good sign that the forest is really healthy, they’ve got secure access to nutritious food and access to the hollow.
“It’s such an intensive thing to undertake in raising a baby … There isn’t a whole lot of data on the species as a whole, but other studies have found they don’t necessarily breed every year, because of reasons like drought.”
Typically, a joey remains in the pouch for about four months and gradually becomes independent by about 10 months of age.
“They either get booted out to make room for the new baby (which is what we suspect happened to Brimi) or they hang around.
“In other locations we’ve seen four or five greater gliders living together in the same hollow, which raises a lot of questions … It goes to show that we still don’t know everything there is to know about these animals.”
Dr Gracanin said a goal of the study was to get eyes on the marsupial.
“We can only conserve if [we know the population is there] … A lot of people don’t realise that there are just thousands of these animals out in the forest.
“The livestream offers an opportunity to know that they exist, become connected with a family as they raise their little joey.”
The joeys are also giving researchers hope that the species is making a steady recovery after 2019/20 bushfires, which saw widespread swaths of the forest burned.
Recently, the NSW Forestry Corporation was also hit with charges over its alleged actions in logging greater glider habitat.
“Tallaganda is a stronghold population – it’s a really large, continuous piece of forest … it’s one [place] that deserves a lot of protection and conservation and a place that we can learn a lot from.”
The study is expected to wind up in early 2026.
“We’re continuing the livestream for a little bit longer, just so we get another chance to look at a joey being raised again,” Dr Gracanin said.
“We’re still going to get lots of information … we’ll be able to see many wonderful moments as the joey starts to emerge from the pouch and be carried on Mum’s back.”
She said they would be watching carefully for any more new residents of the hollow.
“There’s a good chance next year that she’ll [Pip] have another one.
“Although it’s hard to tell how old she is – she might be approaching late adulthood. But she’s a good mum.”
The livestream was set up by Dr Ana Gracanin, with support from the World Wide Fund for Nature Australia.
National Parks Association NSW, Wilderness Australia, and Social Justice Advocates of the Sapphire Coast have also supported the project.
