Success stories
Long-footed potoroo
In June 2023, NSW’s first recorded sighting of the endangered Long-footed Potoroo was captured by a monitoring camera set up in Bondi State Forest.
A living Long-footed Potoroo had never been detected in NSW until we captured an image on an infrared sensor motion camera. Our ecologists detected potoroos at nine separate camera sites in the forest after deploying 88 cameras over a three-week period.
We are continuing our monitoring in the Bondi State Forest studying the size of the identified potoroo population with the assistance of researchers from the Department of Planning and Environment.
Melichrus gibberagee
Melichrus gibberagee is a rare variety of the more common Melicrus plant, which is a shrub that has only been found in small area in and around Gibberagee State Forest in north east NSW.
The majority of the Melichrus gibberagee population had been recorded in an area set aside within Gibberagee State Forest to permanently protect the plant. When our foresters began preparing for an operation in a nearby regrowth forest, they found more than 100 Melichrus gibberagee plants in an area where they had never been recorded before.
As a result a much larger area has been set aside in this part of the forest to protect the plant.
Coastal emu
A Coastal Emu nest containing nine eggs, was discovered by our staff during routine searches in a State forest on the North Coast in mid-2024.
We put an exclusion zone around the nest and engaged with the Saving our Species (SoS) program in the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, who took the lead on managing the nest.
This finding is a perfect example of the searches we conduct before every operation working to identify and protect endangered wildlife in the forest.
Eastern horseshoe bat
Our staff discovered Australia’s largest known roost of Eastern Horseshoe Bats in a previously unmapped cave in a remote area of the Ourimbah State Forest during field surveys in 1996.
We protected a large area around the roost and have continued monitoring the population.
The colony is thriving, with the population size fluctuating around the 10,000 mark, making it possibly one of the largest Eastern Horseshoe bat populations in Australia.