‘Devastated’: scientists too late to captive breed mammal lost to climate change

TheGuardian.com ^ | June 29, 2016 | Jeremy Hance

[Ketill Frostbeard]

The Bramble Cay melomys has become more famous in extinction than it ever was in life. A mouse-like rodent, the melomys amazingly survived on a 3.6 hectare grass-covered cay (a low-lying island in a coral reef) in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef like a ratty Robinson Crusoe for thousands of years. There, it thrived off just a few plant species until human-caused climate change—in the form of rising sea levels and increasing inundations of sea water on the low-lying island—wiped it off the planet.

But, while the extinction has been reported widely, articles have missed an important point: the scientists who uncovered the rodent’s fate had planned to capture individuals and bring them back to the Australian mainland to start a captive breeding programme. They were just too late.

“My colleagues and I were devastated,” Ian Gynther, a Senior Conservation Officer in Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection who led the failed rescue mission, said.

“As each day of our comprehensive survey passed without revealing any trace of the animal, we became more and more depressed,” he added.

Short surveys in both 2011 and early 2014 failed to find a single Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola), but Gynther said the team was still optimistic when the left in August of 2014 believing that the failure of the two most recent surveys “was due to the limited trapping effort.”

Instead, they found the cay totally empty of its sole mammal, which was believed to have evolved in isolation from its nearest relative for nearly a million years and was considered the Great Barrier Reef’s only endemic mammal.

If they had found any survivors, Gynther said the plan was to create a captive population as “an emergency insurance measure” against extinction. Indeed, the team spent five months obtaining the necessary permissions for captive breeding from Australia’s governmental agencies and various stakeholders as well as creating a plan to hold the species at University of Queensland’s Gatton campus.

As storm surges increased, the Bramble Cay melomys saw its habitat and food sources considerably diminished. Repeated inundations potentially drowned individuals as well. The last of the species vanished forever sometime between 2009 and 2014.

Gynther said scientists were cautious about placing the species in captivity, even though the Bramble Cay melomys had been listed by the IUCN Red List as critically endangered since 1996 and not seen by humans since 2009.

“Captive breeding is an expensive undertaking, requiring a significant commitment of staff, resources and time by the parties involved,” he explained. “This is particularly true for a program that is likely to be required for an indefinite period, as would have been the case for the Bramble Cay melomys.”

But the impacts of climate change on the cay, including repeated storm surges that killed off the melomys’ food sources like the common purslane (Portulaca oleracea), happened quicker than conservationists ever anticipated. And the last Bramble Cay melomy may have been simply swept off the island and drowned in the sea.

“By the time it was apparent that a captive breeding program was required as an urgent conservation action, it was already too late,” Gynther said.

The Bramble Cay melomys was simply gone, washed away by rising seas which now threaten the island’s seabird rookeries and sea turtle nesting beaches

The genetics of the Bramble Cay melomys may be wholly lost as well. Tissue samples were taken of 42 individuals in 1998, but the whereabouts of these samples are currently unknown, though, Gynther and his team are trying to track them down.

The loss of this little island survivor is tragically irreversible, but it could provide a number of lessons for conservationists going forward. Given that many climate change impacts are happening far quicker than scientists anticipated, conservationists may need to consider moving more speedily and aggressively to protect an increasing number of climate-vulnerable species.

“[The extinction] highlights that conservation recovery actions need to be highly responsive, especially where climate change impacts are involved,” Gynther said. He added that controversial actions, such as assisted migration for species, must be considered as climate change continues to batter animals and ecosystems.

Of course, in an age of rising seas, more extreme weather, worsening droughts and polar ice melt, conservationists may also need to become even more vocal about dealing with the underlying cause of climate changes: burning fossil fuels. The longer global society goes without transforming itself, the more extinctions will become inevitable.

[fireman15]

This entire article is complete nonsense. It illustrates only the complete incompetence of a government agency to accomplish anything worthwhile despite spending unimaginable amounts of money on a non-existent problme. There are for more species of rodents that have gone extinct than exist today. This is an every day occurrence and has in this case has nothing to do with “global warming”. The form of “climate change” that causes most mass extinctions is called an “ice age”. If we are very fortunate the current interglacial (period of time between ice ages) will continue for another thousand years, but the clock keeps ticking. Just ten thousand years ago the place where we live (in the foothills outside of Seattle) was under thousands of feet of ice.

[V_TWIN]

“Of course, in an age of rising seas, more extreme weather, worsening droughts and polar ice melt, conservationists may also need to become even more vocal about dealing with the underlying cause of climate changes: burning fossil fuels. The longer global society goes without transforming itself, the more extinctions will become inevitable:”

Therein lies the purpose for the whole biased article.....al that hot air just to setup that one sentence rant for climate control.

[Bernard Marx]

The longer global society goes without transforming itself, the more extinctions will become inevitable.

This assumes humans are responsible, which they are demonstrably not! But it raises another question:

Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory is basically "survival of the fittest." Have any of you ever met a Greenie hypocrite who was not a Darwinist? I'll bet money if you asked the authors of this "study" they'd proudly call themselves Darwinists. Doublethink.

[Bitsy]

suicide watch?

[Karl Spooner]

I wouldn't worry too much about it.

.

"More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

[HiTech RedNeck]

And what’s more, I give even money that this rat probably lives elsewhere still.

[Repealthe17thAmendment]

From the Wikipedia:

More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described.

That's a lot of "devastation" to take on, if you're going to be concerned about extinct species.

[TangibleDisgust]

these are the same people who go to 3rd world nations in Africa when there is a famine, take photos of dying children, do NOTHING whatsover to render assistance, and then come back to the USA to wag their fingers in our faces telling us we're responsible for the deaths of those children.

they don't actually want to fix any problems, they just want to assign blame to their political enemies, while wearing their activism as badges on their sleeves while doing the Manhattan cocktail party circuit to brag about how worldly they are.

they are all lousy human beings and deep down, they know it.

In March 1993, photographer Kevin Carter made a trip to southern Sudan, where he took now iconic photo of a vulture preying upon an emaciated Sudanese toddler near the village of Ayod. Carter said he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn’t. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away.

so he watched for 20 minutes, hoping to get a better shot for the NYT, instead of rendering any sort of meaningful assistance. no wonder he committed suicide months later... the guilt must have been overwhelming - as it rightfully should have been.

https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/vulture-stalking-a-child/

[HiTech RedNeck]

Yeah, why is this “Darwin” so incompetent that he can’t crank out more new species as the old ones go?

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

When I was a teen I used to be impressed reading about and seeing reports from the 50s, 60s, and 70s of how they reclaimed low lying Florida areas to make them some of the most vibrant properties in the world. If the sea levels are rising then why aren’t these places underwater again?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Vulture had more patience than he did. “Hey kid, die. Then we can have lunch.”

[immadashell]

The loss of this little island survivor is tragically irreversible...

Hey guys, get a grip. The fact is 99.99% of all creatures, mammals or otherwise, that have ever inhabited this pale blue dot in the universe are extinct. And the remaining species, with the possible exceptions of alligators and hair lice, will become extinct at some point in the future. And, I would submit that the villain in all the previous extinctions was Mother Nature, as opposed to the evil, climate changing, human race.

[Ketill Frostbeard]

Looks like fun ;)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qTlIBdTRB18

[yuleeyahoo]

Funny, I don’t miss them.

[HiTech RedNeck]

A lot of the problem is those blankety blank GOVERNMENTS over there. Try to bring food to feed the dying kids, and they, at best, will skim almost all of it off the top for themselves in their fat cat palaces.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Also how do they know that this rat never hitched a ride somewhere else and set up another home?

[mountainlion]

It seems to me that “Climate Change” is designed for the financial extinction of FREEDOM

[HiTech RedNeck]

The pictures wouldn’t even be so bad if they would just document the whole scenario.

Maybe he did arrange for the kid to be fed, but not on camera, for all we know. Lest he get in trouble with, again, those blankety blank governments.

[treetopsandroofs]

“They can have some of our ‘RATS.”

I say ALL, and do Botany Bay II (not the spaceship).

[Iron Munro]

Because no animal species ever went extinct before the advent of the “hockey stick” and the invention of man made global warming and climate change.