The losses outlined by a worker at a council 45 minutes travel south of Bendigo was enough for one member of a parliamentary inquiry into Victoria's biodiversity decline to say it sent "a little fear" into her heart.

The Macedon Ranges Shire's Krista Patterson-Majoor said that in her lifetime the area's greater gliders, bandicoots and Leadbeater's possums had gone.

"And many more plants and animals are now highly threatened," she said in a transcript recently published by the inquiry.

"Even species that you think of as common - like koalas or kookaburras - there is evidence of their decline as well."

Ms Patterson-Majoor said the cause of environmental declines were not specific to the Macedon Ranges.

"Things like the clearance of vegetation, the habitat, pest plants and animals, inappropriate land management practices and especially climate change are all putting these ecosystems under an incredible amount of pressure," she said.

She and her colleague Michelle Wyatt's testimony returned to greater gliders a number of times as parliamentarians asked questions.

The gliders are believed to have last been sighted in the area in 2014 and a number of searches have taken place to see whether Australia's largest gliding mammal can still be found there.

That includes efforts spearheaded by a Bendigo-based La Trobe University researcher who helped train pet dogs to uncover signs of life like scats.

Evidence from elsewhere in Australia suggests sometimes rapid declines in population and much of their remaining Victorian habitat is in parts of the state's east where 2020's catastrophic bushfires burned.

One reason the gliders disappeared from Hanging Rock was probably because there was not enough suitable habitat or nearby colonies, Ms Wyatt said.

"If there was an investment to be made in ecosystem restoration, it would be about looking at improving connectivity across the landscape, through public and private land, to help populations disperse."

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That would likely mean finding more ways to involve private landowners in wider environmental conservation efforts, Ms Wyatt said.

Those efforts could take on added importance in central Victoria including around Bendigo, where forests have been highly fragmented by land settlement and logging over the last 200 years, multiple groups from the region have told the inquiry.

One Bendigo pair even produced a list of animals that they had seen at their Mandurang property 20 years ago but were now gone.

Twelve birds and other animals had disappeared over that period and 11 were in decline.

Eight animals were doing well or on the increase, including a combination of native and introduced species.

Ms Wyatt said biodiversity incentives, farmer advisory services and better resourcing of groups like Trust for Nature, which helps stop clearing on private lands, would help.

"They are under-resourced, to say the least, and struggle to also keep up with the demand for their services," she said.

Funding for conservation often come in shorter-term installments, Ms Wyatt said.

That makes it harder for councils to work one-on-one with landholders.

She said landowners are often really keen to revegetate their properties but do not know what species to use or how to do it.

"And they often do not have discretionary money to invest in revegetation projects," she said.

La Trobe Bendigo academic Jim Radford touched on private land tenure during parts of his wide-ranging testimony to the inquiry in April.

He said it was vital that managing threatened species and environment became "tenure-blind" when it came to public and private land.

His La Trobe colleague Andrew Bennett said one way people could include private landowners in conservation was to ask them how they would design their land 50 years into the future.

"[It is saying] 'what do we want this farm to be like? These are the productive areas. These are the areas that are not; we will fence those off. These are the areas we want shelter'," he said.

Those sorts of "scenario planning" ideas could be expanded to wider rural areas or the whole of Victoria, with detailed and systematic thinking about what patches of land get set aside, and why, Professor Bennett said.

"It is going to take 50, 60, 100 years, and if we do not start now, our grandkids will not have it," he said.

Dr Radford said that under such schemes it would be even more important that farmers did not carry so many of the costs of conservation.

"We cannot expect the farmer, who is trying to make a living and feed us and clothe us and do all that, to carry the costs," he said.

"Those farms that are being managed sustainably should be recognised, accredited, and there should be a monetary benefit.

"That could be through access to markets or price premiums or stewardship payments, so that cost is shared across the community."

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