“A thorough survey effort involving 900 small animal trap-nights, 60 camera trap-nights and two hours of active daytime searches produced no records of the species, confirming that the only known population of this rodent is now extinct”, Luke Leung, one of the co-authors of the report, said in a press release.
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Australian researchers say rising sea levels have wiped out the Bramble Cay melomys, a rodent that lived on a tiny outcrop in the Great Barrier Reef.
The report said the “key factor” responsible for killing off the animals was flooding of their island on multiple occasions during the last decade, “causing dramatic habitat loss” and possibly killing some individuals directly.
The species was first discovered by European sailors, who landed on Bramble Cay in 1845. By 1978, it was estimated there were several hundred that lived on the small island. The experts laid 150 traps on the island for six nights. In the latest survey report published this month, researchers from Queensland’s Department of Environmental Protection and the University of Queensland state the “root-cause” of the disappearance of the melomys “points to human-induced climate change”.
The species has surprisingly vanished entirely from its 350m-long cay home in the Torres Strait owing to sea-level rise, the researchers pointed out in a University of Queensland report.
“Significantly, this probably represents the first recorded mammalian extinction due to anthropogenic climate change”, the report continued.
As a result, the Queensland government website now recommends suggested recovery actions not be taken.
As scientists declared the Bramble Cay melomys extinct, the Queensland government announced that it would not make any attempts for a recovery of the species.
Scientists are not sure how the animals first arrived at Bramble Cay, but they theorize that they may have floated there on driftwood or arrived in sailing vessel. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural “background” rate of about one to five species per year.
The 2015 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species indicates that climate change could have led to the extinction of the Little Swan Island hutia, a rodent previously found on the Honduras.
“Certainly, extinction and climatic change has gone hand in hand throughout the history of the world”, John White, an ecologist from Deakin University, told The Guardian.
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He added close relatives of the Bramble Cay, or the original population from which the island population came from, may still persist on the Fly River delta of Papua New Guinea.
