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.
It’s a panic move.
Here, homo sapiens has proven to be able to adapt to almost anything IF HE IS WILLING. Trouble is, he’s also prone to crazy ideas.
Aren’t those so called “scientists” intelligent to know that climate has been in a constant state of change since Creation. Some caused by the way nature was designed by the Creator, some because of Sun activity and some because of fluctuations in our cosmos.
LOL...Star Trek Reference!
I’ve got mice in our garage that I can send them; NYC has lots of rats. I’m sure we can help replenish the rodent population.
nope... a creator would poop their party of being bosses of what this world is here for.
we can give um so many rats and mice that they will beg for cats.
One theory on where the rats went...
When attempting to save a species from extinction, be careful what you wish for.
Why are leftists upset by the evolution.
This is truly survival of the fittest.
believed to have evolved in isolation from its nearest relative for nearly a million yearsWikipedia says that it was
similar to the Cape York melomys except that it had some protein differences and a coarser tail caused by elevated scales
Thus it wasn't much different than other rodents in the area.
It was a rodent, they literally breed every chance they get, micro evolutionary change especially within a limited breed stock could happen within the span of centuries if that. Would not be surprised if it started it's evolutionary journey from the seed of some stranded ship rats from the 18th century.
I find it hard to believe it survived events such as:
As glaciers and icecaps melted at the end of the last Ice Age, sea levels rose and dramatically changed the world, perhaps nowhere more dramatically than in what is now the Black Sea, where, according to some researchers, a flood 7600 years ago filled the basin. NOAA
Real science tells us sea levels rise and fall naturally, due to events such as ice ages, fluctuations of temperature, etc. Even weather events [NASA] can affect the sea level.
So how did this little rat survive millions of years of sea level change? It didn't, because it isn't.
1) It’s a rat.
2) Scientists, while “devastated”, couldn’t be all that worried about it, otherwise they’d be trying harder to trap a few for saving.
3) Species evolve. Or don’t and die out. Been like that since day one. If the “scientists” could see past the end of their own noses, they’d know this.
4) At the end of the day...it’s a rat.
“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.”
They’ll turn them loose someplace they shouldn’t be and screw up that area’s ecology. It’ll give them something else to bitch about.
Yeah, just think, if at the last big-wig Global Warming conference they flew coach instead of on private jets or if the just took a cab instead of limo, they could have used the money they saved to save these rats.
What a crock !!!
It was a rat and now it’s been successfully eliminated.
Was the sea rising or did the cay (island) sink? My money is on the sinking of the rat infested bog.
How is the world any worse off with one less rodent?
Hmm.. Natural events that likely swamped the cay...
2009 - Solomon Islands earthquake - up to 45.39 feet tsunami action.
2011 - Typhoon Yasi - 12 foot wave action up to 300 miles from the epicenter..
The list just goes on and on and on. It’s a cay, a low sandy island atop a coral reef.
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