Australian ecologist Katherine Best on greater gliders and saving forests

At 30, Katherine Best is already one of the foremost experts on the endangered greater glider. The species—about the size of a house cat and able to spread its limbs to glide up to 100 yards through the forest canopy—is of keen interest to conservation ecologists as a bellwether for the eucalypt forests of eastern Australia.

Best grew up in these forests. Now a doctoral candidate at the Australian National University, she contributes to research supported by WWF and global tech company HP Inc.—part of a larger partnership to protect and restore forests in Australia and five other countries. As one facet of that research, scientists are testing the efficacy of installing nest boxes to help return gliders to forests hit hard by logging, bushfires, and climate change.

Tell me about yourself.

My name is Kat, K-A-T, and I am a PhD student slash very poor person.

Ah, the financial woes of a young academic! What’s your research about? 

So, greater gliders really need old growth forests. And that means trees that have formed an abundance of habitat features, such as hollows and crevices. The area of forest that we’re in has experienced significant disturbance over the past 150 years, including widespread logging and bushfire. And as a result, there are now too few hollows to support this species.

Today we’ve been installing custom plywood nest boxes, and we’re hoping that this project will show that these boxes are a suitable strategy to augment this habitat. And if they are suitable, maybe we can put them in areas where the greater gliders are really struggling.

This forest has been replanted? But the trees are so tall!

It’s beautiful. It looks like a forest. But it’s not functioning like one. All the trees are pretty much the same size, same height. In a healthy forest, you have younger trees, middle-aged trees, and older trees. By the time the older trees naturally collapse, the other trees will make up for that deficit. It’s just this beautiful cycling turnover.

So, your team is installing nest boxes to replicate tree hollows while the forest recovers. And one of your jobs is to monitor gliders, see if they’re using the boxes?

Yeah, so as part of my PhD research, I am radio tracking 15 greater gliders, spending every day, every night with them, following their movements.

You do get to know them very well. They’ve all got their own little personalities. And I want to believe that we’re friends, but it might be a one-sided friendship.

Ha! Speaking of being invested, I understand you have a deep connection to this place.  

I’ve been going into the forest since I was a little kid. Growing up here and having the 2009 bushfire really impact me and my community, and fighting for these forests for so long, I know them so personally. I know what they’ve been through. I know the destruction they’ve faced, and I know the hardship that these species are facing.

I’m just so in love with these forests.

Tell me more about how you have fought for the forest?

I've come to this project from a forest activism background. I spent a lot of time out in the forest campaigning for better protections, protecting the greater glider—they’re such a flagship species for the whole forest.

And from an activism background, you’ve now pivoted to academics?

I don’t think [activism] was ever my strong point. There has been—and still is—a need for very staunch activism, but there is also a real need for us to work collaboratively to find solutions. This PhD obviously serves to further our knowledge of greater gliders as a species and what we can do to restore the habitat. And, in a way, this is also a form of me channeling my passion and desire to have an impact, to use my voice and platform, if I have one, for good. This is still about me protecting these forests that I love so fiercely, but in a way that maybe has more traction.

I understand that the core members of this research team are all women. What’s that like? 

It’s been really cool. I think there are a lot of powerful women in ecology and a very empowering solidarity. And, this is a bit controversial, but I think women have had to work twice as hard to be recognized in this space, to be taken seriously and seen as capable and competent.

You have to be willing to go out of your comfort zone to not be treated as a prissy little delicate flower. You don’t necessarily have the room to complain or to express your frustration or discomfort, because as soon as you do, you are put into a box.

Look, it’s not for everyone. We’ll be out here, covered in mud, soaked to the bone, covered in leeches.

And, you know what? I am a silly little girl who loves possums, but I’m also incredibly passionate and driven and, I guess, intelligent enough to get into a PhD program. I am all of these things.

We’re so capable, and we’re so strong. And it’s also about refusing to be typecast or labeled. Other people don’t get to define where my boundaries are.

And you get used to the leeches?

Yeah.