Establishing foundations: Designing a long-term experiment to evaluate whether nestboxes assist population recovery of an endangered species after fire

The loss of hollow-bearing trees drives population declines of hollow-dependent species. Disturbances such as wildfire can exacerbate these declines. Artificial structures, like nestboxes, are a commonly used management tool that attempts to offset hollow loss. However, the effectiveness of nestboxes as a conservation strategy is rarely tested within an experimental framework. The endangered southern greater glider (Petauroides volans) is an obligate hollow-dependent arboreal marsupial that is highly sensitive to wildfire. Southern greater glider populations experienced high mortality and habitat loss following the 2019/2020 megafires in south-eastern Australia. To test whether purpose-built nestboxes could assist the post-fire population recovery of the southern greater glider, we established a long-term, landscape-scale experiment. We installed a total of 234 nestboxes at sites in East Gippsland (north-eastern Victoria) and Tallaganda (southern New South Wales). Nestbox sites were mat..., , # Establishing foundations: Designing a long-term experiment to evaluate whether nestboxes assist population recovery of an endangered species after fire

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.rv15dv4mh](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.rv15dv4mh)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: numbers_greaterglider_eg.csv

**Description:** Raw survey data from East Gippsland. 

**Variables**

* Round: Survey Round (Pre or Post).
* SiteID: Unique to each transect.
* Rep: Replicates (Numerical).
* Fireclass: Fire mapping severity (Category).
* Treat: What the treatment was planned to be (Treatment - T or Control -C).
* Treat2: What the treatment was (Treatment - T or Control -C).
* Date_surveyed: Date of spotlighting survey (dd/mm/yyyy).
* Obs1: Sightings by only observer 1 (Count).
* Obs2: Sightings by only observer 2 (Count).
* Both: Sightings by both observers (Count). 
* Off: Greater glider sightings off the transect (Count). 
* Highestgg: Maximum count of grea...,