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AUSTRALIA — Matt Stephens is an Australian conservation biologist who's fighting deforestation and habitat loss in an interesting — and ingenious — way.
In the past few years, Australia has been decimated by powerful wildfires that scorched millions of acres of land, putting both people and wildlife at risk.
According to a report commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature Australia, nearly 3 billion animals — mammals, reptiles, birds and frogs — were killed or displaced by Australia's devastating 2019 to 2020 bush fires.
To combat this displacement, Stephens tuned into his entrepreneurial side, inventing a tool called the "Hollowhog" that artificially creates tree hollows — small cavities in living trees that many animals depend on for shelter — that would otherwise take anywhere from 70 to 120 years to form naturally.
"It's a high-speed, spinning, cutting head with tungsten carbide tips that spins at about 11,000 (revolutions per minute), a long spindle shaft and then with the ability to suck all the wood chip out," Stephens said.
Basically, think about a hole cutter attached to a vacuum, but way more refined and with an actual practical application.
"The fact that we can rapidly install one of these hollows in less than an hour is a real game changer," he added.
According to the Wilderness Society, Australia is home to 303 native wildlife species that rely on hollows to nest, breed, shelter and feed. This includes 31% of native mammals and 15% of native birds. Each species has its own requirements in terms of hollow size, location (branch or trunk), tree species and surrounding vegetation, which affects how a hollow is used.
Stephens said that the hollows created by his tool can last 200 to 300 years and grow with time.
He added that nest boxes in Australia stay at one size only and generally only last about seven to 10 years before falling to the forest floor.
"A hollow, the way it will operate is that we'll carve the hollow — and we may carve a chamber the same size as a nest box — but over the years, that hollow will further develop and so it will grow larger and larger," Stephens said. "And as long as the living tissue of that tree can continue to wrap more layer around the outside and outpace the rate of that hollow's development, that tree will remain stable."
So far, the Hollowhog is responsible for creating thousands of new habitats across Australia.
"I can see the hollows going in and know that long after I'm gone, maybe 300 years into the future, that the hollow that we carved ... will still be operating, it'll still be there potentially as a home for wildlife," Stephens said.
