Posted on 06/29/2016 7:57:20 AM PDT by 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.
I saw that movie , The Killer Shrews (1959)
Let them find and store some dead critters, and then clone them when the technology allows such for a reasonable cost in a couple of decades. We’ll bring back many other animals that way. It isn’t ideal, but it’ll work.
Antarctic ice is increasing....
So the 2008 election didn’t result in lower sea levels after all?
“Indeed, the team spent five months obtaining the necessary permissions for captive breeding from Australia’s governmental agencies “
And there is their problem. The whiny little bleeding hearts cared more about the bureaucracy. They could live trapped a dozen and been breeding them before any paperwork was done.
Scientists who can’t keep track of a few tissue samples expect us to save the planet??
One day they’ll turn up, probably in the bottom of somebody’s gym locker, and they’ll clone up a mess of these rats and everyone will be happy again.
Is / was there some actual BENEFIT that the planet gained from it's existence?
It was the only thing on the island besides plants.
BULL$#!+!!!!
They can have some of our ‘RATS.
Give it a rest.
Get a real job, guys!
Over 95% of all species ever existing on earth have disappeared--- or not... without your help!
Get a productive job and stop the unproductive whining.
If Gaia wanted them to live, she would have evolved them better.
We must take the scholars and scientists who failed in their great gambit to save the mammal and make example of them as a sacrifice to the Rat God. Flay and Skin them as sustenance tribute for the hopeful reincarnation of the blessed rat mammals.
They were charged with a holy task and they failed. Nothing less than complete atonement via self sacrifice will suffice.
This is a Bramble Cay melomy -- also known as a RAT.
I have their little heads mounted on my wall. It was all the safari I could afford this year.
I'm sure there are some snakes or scorpions they could play with instead.
Right. Burocracy kills.
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