https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/prog...rst-climate-change-mammal-extinction/10830080
For thousands of years, generations of Melomys rubicola lived and bred on a sandy bank in the Torres Strait known as Bramble Cay. Some time between 2009 and 2014 the last of this species died; probably drowned in a storm surge.
Unlike koalas or whales, the small rodent was never cute enough to rate much of a conservation effort. It's only with its extinction - noted for the first time by the Federal Government, in a press release from Environment Minister Melissa Price - that it's attracted interest from beyond the circle of biologists and conservationists that warned of its demise.
This was probably the first recorded mammal species-loss because of human-induced climate change, according to the Queensland Government, which reported on the extinction in 2016.
John Woinarski, a professor at Charles Darwin University who has published research on the species, said its loss was entirely foreseeable and preventable.
"It's been known for a couple of decades it was in a pretty precarious position," he told Hack.
"It suffered from living a long way away from anywhere else, and being a rat and being not particularly attractive.
"It didn't have much public advocacy for it."
He said the extinction of the Bramble Cay melomys is a story of underfunded conservation programs, plans that were written but never implemented, and the fact that the public simply cares more about charismatic animals.
Living on an island just three metres high and five-hectares in area (the size of two MCGs), the melomys survived on washed-up vegetation. A survey team in 2009 noted the vegetation on the island had declined, possibly because of occasional storm surges. They also noted substantially fewer melomys.
"There was less and less vegetation on the island, and then there was probably a major storm surge event and the whole island went underwater temporarily," Professor Woinarski said.
He said that climate change would have "substantially contributed".
"It could have been simply storm events unrelated to climate change, but climate change has also been causing sea water to rise in the area."
