"It was just so upsetting to see how it was impacting friends and family as well as all the wildlife," she said.

"It just felt so helpless, being so far away."

Now, on World Wildlife Day (March 3), the fourth-year Charles Sturt University student is heading to Woomargama National Park as part of her honours research into the effect of the 2019/20 bushfires on one of Australia's most vulnerable species.

"Greater Gliders are Australia's largest gliding mammal .... they can glide up to a hundred metres in the air," she said.

"I think that's pretty amazing."

The research is still "very early days", but Ms Green has been able to make a few observations from her initial fieldwork.

"So far, it's definitely been very evident that densities of greater gliders are much higher in those unburned areas compared to the burned areas of the Park," she said.

"Those severely burn areas, we're seeing little to no regrowth at all, and obviously that can't sustain arboreal wildlife such as Greater Gliders."

IN OTHER NEWS:

With World Wildlife Day and Monday's dire IPCC climate report highlighting the effects of climate change and loss of habitat on the world's biodiversity, Ms Green said it was important to emphasise that humans are also part of this ecosystem under stress.

"I think this bringing awareness to people about Australia's unique flora and fauna is just as important as solving those human-based issues as well," she said.

Ms Green's research is being supervised by CSU Associate Professor in Ecology, Dale Nimmo, and is supported by Murray Local Land Services through funding from the Australian Government's Bushfire Recovery Program.

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