Localization

Australia, Papoua

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Threats

No major threat

Agriculture​

Bushfire​

Hypocalcaemia (in captivity)

 

Population

Stable​

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U.I.C.N. : L.C. - Least Concern

 

C.I.T.E.S: No indexed

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Trade

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Australia :​​

To ensure that gilders are not illegally removed from the wild and sold as pets, all breeders, distributors and owners would require permits outlining the glider's history and source location. Strict penalties for illegal activities should be enforced. In addition, wild populations would require constant monitoring to ensure the protection of the glider species.

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In Australia, sugar gliders can be kept in Victoria, South Australia, and the Northern Territory. However, they are not allowed to be kept as pets in Western Australia, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland or Tasmania.

DNA analysis indicates that "the USA (sugar) glider population originates from West Papua, Indonesia with no illegal harvesting from other native areas such as Papua New Guinea or Australia".Given that the West Papuan gliders have been tentatively classified as Krefft's gliders (albeit to be changed in the future), this indicates that at least the captive gliders kept in the United States are Krefft's gliders, not sugar gliders.

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United States :​

Campbell et al. (2019), have provided evidence to support anecdotal reports from commercial websites offering the sale of sugar gliders that the source of the USA population of sugar gliders is West Papua, Indonesia. In our sampling, we found no evidence of illegal trade from other parts for the sugar glider native range but we cannot discount the possibility that animals are taken from other parts of Indonesia or Papua New Guinea and traded from Sorong. The scope of our inference is limited due to sparse sampling of West Papua, surrounding islands and the voluntary nature of tissue donation from USA pet owners. More extensive sampling of wild sugar gliders, animals bred in captive breeding facilities in West Papua and privately owned sugar gliders in the USA along with detailed pedigree information from breeders in the USA would be required to fully understand the importation history (Hogg et al., 2018). We established that despite being founded very recently (less than 30 years ago), the USA population is significantly more diverse than other introduced but older populations in Australia (Campbell et al., 2018). This implies multiple recent introductions and/or gene flow between Indonesia and the USA (Dawnay et al., 2008; Ogden & Linacre, 2015), and suggests that there is sufficient diversity within the USA population to avoid negative consequences of inbreeding if pedigrees are carefully managed. Ongoing importation of sugar gliders from legal avenues would allow US breeders to actively manage genetic diversity in the captive USA population, while allowing Indonesian wildlife traders the opportunity to benefit from their natural resources. For the specific purpose of preventing inbreeding in the USA an appropriately managed wild harvest of sugar gliders from West Papua, Indonesia, could continue with sufficient regulation of wildlife trade and if sustainable wildlife harvest quotas are enforced (Nijman, 2010; Janssen & Chng, 2018). Initiatives to achieve this could include, stricter licensing and registration for exporters, minimum mandatory reporting standards for captive breeding facilities and monitoring of selected wildlife trade hubs (Nijman, 2010).

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