The Den Box Project completed its first full year in June. The numbers are modest and we are pleased with them: 412 boxes built, administered across 22 local government areas, by schools, men's sheds, Landcare groups and four Indigenous ranger teams.
A den box is a simple object — a hollow substitute, built to a plan, with a predator baffle on the mounting pole. What it is not is a substitute for a tree hollow, and we have been careful in every build-day briefing not to oversell it. A hollow takes a century. A box takes an afternoon and lasts perhaps fifteen years. The box buys time; it does not replace what was lost.
Year one taught us two things. The first is that build quality varies, and that the variation is almost entirely about the timber. Boxes built from salvaged hardwood are still sound; a handful built from treated pine have already warped. We have revised the plan to specify timber more tightly.
The second is that the build day itself is doing work we did not budget for. Roughly a third of this season's seasonal field volunteers first encountered QED at a den-box build. It is a low bar to entry and a genuine contribution, and it turns out to be the most effective recruitment we do. Year two targets 600 boxes.