Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Claims are flying that Global Warming has claimed its first mammal, a kind of rat which used to live on just one small island in the Cyclone prone Torres Strait, off the Northern coast of Australia.
Human-caused climate change appears to have driven the Great Barrier Reef’s only endemic mammal species into the history books, with the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lives on a tiny island in the eastern Torres Strait, being completely wiped-out from its only known location.
It is also the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-caused climate change.
An expert says this extinction is likely just the tip of the iceberg, with climate change exerting increasing pressures on species everywhere.
The rodent, also called the mosaic-tailed rat, was only known to live on Bramble Cay a small coral cay, just 340m long and 150m wide off the north coast of Queensland, Australia, which sits at most 3m above sea level.
It had the most isolated and restricted range of any Australian mammal, and was considered the only mammal species endemic to the Great Barrier Reef.
When its existence was first recorded by Europeans in 1845, it was seen in high density on the island, with sailors reporting they shot the “large rats” with bows and arrows. In 1978, it was estimated there were several hundred on the small island.
But the melomys were last seen in 2009, and after an extensive search for the animal in 2014, a report has recommended its status be changed from “endangered” to “extinct”.
Calling the dead rats a victim of “climate” seems a bit of a stretch. A small population species which precariously clings to existence on a tiny spit of low lying land in the middle of Australia’s Cyclone Alley was never destined to survive for long.
From the Australian Government Website;
There are three threats to the species. Firstly, there is only the single known population of the species and searches on other cays and in adjacent areas of New Guinea have failed to discover other populations. Secondly, the cay is prone to inundation from storm surge and other disturbances. Further compounding risk to the species is that the species appears to be inbred. Therefore, resilience of the species to catastrophic events such as cyclones, introductions of weeds or introduced predators, or the arrival of a novel disease, is very low (Curtis et al. 2012 cited in DEHP 2013e).
The most recent survey for the species in 2012 resulted in no animals being recorded. The most recent verified record of the species is from trapping in 2004. It is possible that a catastrophic inundation of the island has already occurred (DEHP 2013e).
Read more: http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspecies.pl?taxon_id=64477
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Or,
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
In either case, the alarmist damage is done. It’s an election year and the alarmists will do anything to secure promises of funding.
Good riddance I say. Those varmints were a hazard to the wild life species on that island, with no predators to control their numbers.
g
um, not all rats are ‘rats’ .. we have plenty of indigenous species on the mainland, my favourite being the river rat -the one that eats cane toads 🙂 As far as I can read, they were the wild life.
If indigenous Australian rats were reintroduced to the island, they would likely re-evolve into Melomys after enough generations (not that this is a good idea).
It looks remarkably like New York’s Schneiderman.
Well clearly these Melanomas are not native to that island, or we would find fossils of their ancestors that they evolved from. So they are or were an invasive species, so good to get rid of.
And if they WERE the wildlife, then they must have been cannibals, if there was nothing else that they ate. Cannibalism is not known for its survival characteristics. Sooner or later you run out of friends to eat.
G
Yeah, they claim that sea level rise is the cause, but in this article from 2013 it was mentioned that the place rose in size between 1987 and 2011. This would seem quite difficult if the sea level had risen there, wouldn’t it.
http://theconversation.com/australian-endangered-species-bramble-cay-melomys-18036
“Between 1958 and 1987, the cay decreased in size; but in 2011 it had returned to a size comparable to 1958”.
Thanks for that find, Nylo. People forget that small coral sand atolls change size constantly, regardless of what the sea level does.
w.
“Human-caused?” No one can claim to possibly know that; not even the IPCC. Time everyone stopped paying lip service to this rubbish. Best way to kill stories like this in the MSM is they get no clicks at all.
“An expert says” ….. expert = X is an unknown quantity and spurt is a drip under pressure!
Is there anyway you can corner the guardian for spreading bullshitzer??
How on earth did they arrive at that conclusion? This is not science … it’s wild-@ur momisugly$$ed speculation.
This is the exact statement I zoomed in on as well. It feels like it’s just made up. Anyone with an ounce of critical thinking ability would want an explanation. I mean of course, other than the Guardian.
…Evidence ? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence !
Scientific “conclusion” based on repeated assertions, PR, dubious data and a compliant media seeking compelling, dramatic stories.
Gizmoda, ever the climate hysteric friend have a clickbait article on the matter too with claims of a 20cm ‘sea level’ rise in 10 years .. the NOAA data I linked in my comment there suggests this is pure fabrication.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/06/this-australian-rodent-is-the-first-mammal-to-go-extinct-due-to-human-caused-climate-change/comment-page-1/#comment-3777743
Well, Gizmodo is a Gawker property, so there may be some editorial changes there soon. The constant propagandizing regarding ClimateChange™ is annoying.
Evidence, an UNKNOWN expert SAID SO. The expert is probably from WWF. They are experts don’t you know? 🙂
Why would we listen to the World Wrestling Federation on things climatic in the first place?
According to the trolls, we are already in the middle of the worst mass extinction since the dinosaurs were wiped out.
If that were true, could this really be the first documented case?
(To say nothing of the fact that the documentation for this case is pathetic at best.)
If that’s the case, why aren’t TROLLS extinct yet? 😉
You will never get science from these nut-jobs. They are into extortion.
Oh noes! Now we’ve done it. We extinctified a species of rat. From the completely mythological phenomenom, manmade warming, causing seas to inch up a bit, which of course they were already doing way before any supposed manmade effect. But hey, why bother with little details like that? We must not interrupt them while they are busy shaming and blaming, and wringing their hands, because of course, “this is just the tip of the iceberg”. Yes. Now comes a cascade of mass extinction “events”.
If only the Alarmists would go extinct. Now that would be progress.
Oopsies. There are no more icebergs left. A bazillion nukes took ’em out!
ja ja ja – ‘the tip of the iceberg’…
Did the target practice in the 1800’s have anything to do with the ultimate extinction? Or was the isolation of the species the event that led to the inevitable conclusion? The article points to no mechanism whereby human caused global warming has impacted the demise of this creature. And it still remains possible that there will be other members of this species found at some other point in the future. After all, we don’t even really know if they were a distinct “species” at all since there was no opportunity to determine if they could mate with other rats, which I suspect that they most likely could, meaning that the designation as a “species” is only for the pride of some rodentologist. How do we test whether any of these “species” is in fact distinct and cannot mate with others? That’s the fraud of “Darwin’s Finches”–they were not distinct species at all, but members of the same species.
The CAGW inference goes like this.
(1) the island was already prone to inundation
(2) the seas are rising and we’re all gunna DROWN!
(3) we don’t actually know for sure that these creatures are all gone, or if they are gone, what did them in, but it MUST be our fault and we’re all gunna DROWN
(4) so the Bramble Cay melomys must have been wiped out by the accelerated sea level rise that is going to DROWN US ALL.
So that’s the mechanism they have in mind.
All it would take is one ship tying up — which they do — and a a couple of dogs let loose on the island for a couple of days, and no more Melomys.
For as long as icebergs will exist. They are also an endangered species mind you!
In the picture, the cute little mouse is sitting and eating some yummy Purslane, a not bad tasting edible weed and is suppose to be as good for you as eating spinach. Now that it is starting to grow out of control in by flower beds, I’ll be adding it to my salads. I do just grab some and eat it right off the ground.
It’s wonderful. Just a bit of bacon (or bacon grease) and a bit of onion. Quite nice, actually.
From 2013:”Threats
The small population size means genetic drift, disease and introduced species all pose a threat to the species.
Habitat loss via erosion of the cay is the single most important threat, particularly given that sea levels are predicted to rise thanks to climate change. Bramble Cay is by no means stable. Between 1958 and 1987, the cay decreased in size; but in 2011 it had returned to a size comparable to 1958.
While the size of the cay varies, the vegetation on it is shrinking, and this might be the main cause of the melomys’ decline.
Bramble Cay also serves as a rookery to marine turtles and seabirds. The vegetation is disturbed by nesting seabirds throughout the year and by turtles between October and March. In our December 2011 survey the area disturbed by turtles was quite extensive, and many turtles were nesting towards the centre of the cay. Photos show a substantial reduction in the cover of vegetation between 2009 and 2011.”
https://theconversation.com/australian-endangered-species-bramble-cay-melomys-18036
save the turtles….kill the melomys
A bit more information from a very quick search:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melomys
leads to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramble_Cay_melomys
wherin this: “In June 2016, researchers from Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, and the University of Queensland jointly reported that the species had indeed become extinct, adding: “Significantly, this probably represents the first recorded mammalian extinction due to anthropogenic climate change”.[2][1]”
Probably?
(Tried to get the link to work to the pdf of the survey report, but it wouldn’t download for me).
Reminds me of declining bee populations in Europe. It’s been illegal in Germany to kill the European Hornet since 1987, which kills bees. Lots of bees.
Turtles are carnivores, I believe. I suspect the turtles could have caught the occasional rat here and there, slowly depleting the slender numbers of the tiny species (if, indeed, it was a species). Further, seabirds (which eat about anything) could easily have snarfed down some teensy weensy baby rats (“Ooh!” gulp “That was good! Here’s another!” gulp etc.); nor does the article state which seabirds were there, though hardly any that I know of are herbivorous. It does not require mankind to deplete wildlife in an isolated area (which an island is, by definition). There is no known cure for stupidity.
Also, rats can swim and tread water for days. So it’s possible that some Melomy refugees have washed up on other nearby islands. If predatory fish didn’t get to them first–they’re not that picky about what they eat. If it fits in their mouths, it’s fair game.
Extinction is natural and normal. Without it, evolution could not function. 99% of species are extinct.
Extinction is the norm survival is the exception , well according to earths history anyway .
It’s worth noting that after mass extinction events, there is a tremendous burst of life and species introduction.
Not only that , but “… used to live on just one small island …”. Prime candidates for extinction, then. Excuse my lack of concern.
Go to any hardware store and you’ll find rat poison by the sackful …
Right? Somewhere in the world there are REAL PROBLEMS.
The people of Alberta don’t understand what the fuss is about. rat-free Alberta
Hmmm… rat-ocide in Alberta. Why isn’t this in all the news?
Why isn’t the blatant government sponsored rat genocide in the news? It is. They brag about it. It’s no secret. It’s just that no eco-loon has had the guts to stand up for the poor oppressed Alberta rats … yet.
maybe so but there is no empirical basis for attribution to fossil fuel emissions
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
How did the “rat” get there in the first place ?…A “rat” infested Liberal ship that sank in the 1800’s, of course !! These “rats” are well known for jumping ship when the liberal “cause” has come to an end, after leeching all the money they can from the poor, unsuspecting taxpayer ! IMHO….
Rats were brought by ships in the past and did considerable damage to existing wildlife. The killing of a human caused invasive species (unnatural pest) is not a bad thing, but a good one.
EXACTLY. Now we have 6 foot tall human rats ruining everything.
ems…please stop insulting rats by comparing them to U.S. politicians !!
These rats were presumably brought in, like the Lord Howe Island rats: http://www.gbict.co.nz/Newsletters/Issue29/LordHoweIsland.htm
So it’s OK to get rid of some introduced rats, but not others?
They probably AREN’T introduced; there’s a whole bunch of Melomys species in Australia and similar animals in PNG. They’ve been there a while. Since there isn’t any other known population of these creatures, where could they have been introduced *from*?
I stand corrected – not introduced.
There’s a photo of the island and more information here:
http://theconversation.com/australian-endangered-species-bramble-cay-melomys-18036
Clearly, the “victim of climate change” claim is laughable.
No, they are native, but hey, don’t find out before you post.
Philip Schaeffer June 14, 2016 at 11:25 pm
No, they are native, but hey, don’t find out before you post.
(from the research)
https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2016/06/barrier-reef-rodent-first-mammal-declared-extinct-due-climate-change
Barrier Reef rodent is first mammal declared extinct due to climate change
The Bramble Cay melomys 14 June 2016
“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.”
“Anecdotal information obtained from a professional fisherman who visited Bramble Cay annually for the past 10 years suggested that the last known sighting of the Bramble Cay melomys was made in late 2009.”
Dr Leung said the fact that exhaustive efforts had failed to record the rodent at its only known location and extensive surveys had not found it on any other Torres Strait or Great Barrier Reef island gave him confidence in the assertion that Australia had lost another mammal species.
“Significantly, this probably represents the first recorded mammalian extinction due to anthropogenic climate change.
“However, new information is provided in support of a previously presented hypothesis that the Fly River delta of Papua New Guinea is a possible source of the original melomys population on Bramble Cay, so the Bramble Cay melomys or a closely related species might occur there. “
Dr Leung said it could be premature to declare the Bramble Cay melomys extinct on a global scale.
The study was led by Ian Gynther from Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection and in partnership with UQ researchers Natalie Waller and Luke Leung.
I haven’t been able to find anything on how far the “island” is from the mainland.
Perhaps it was easier to reach during the last ice age.
Regardless, rodents are famous for hitching rides on pieces of drift wood and being carried to nearby islands.
Obviously the island was connected to the mainland ~10k years ago. The island is also in range of driftwood from the Fly River, PNG. So the colony has been isolated for ~10k years max and possibly a lot less. It might even have come and gone multiple times over the millenia (in on driftwood, breed up, wiped out by a storm surge, rinse and repeat). ]Walked in seems more likely than the driftwood route, if there’s no known colony elsewhere.]
And Richard says there are Melomys all over the place, so what is this rubbish about them being extinct ? Either there ARE melomys elsewhere that could have been introduced to this rock pile, and live there a while, or else there aren’t any anywhere else. Just round up some from elsewhere and take them to this piece of sand during the next low tide, when it is above water. Well they will drown too come high tide, but at least they will have lived on their new species digs for a few hours.
G
Leonard, Melomys are a separate family to rats. Around the Brisbane area there are two types of Melomys – Melomys cervinipas (fawn footed) and Melomys burtoni (grassland). There are five types of the family rattus- rattus fuscipes (bush rat), rattus lutreolus (swamp rat), rattus tunneyi (pale field rat), rattus rattus (ship rat which came from suth-east Asia on ships) and rattus norvegicus (sewer rat which came from Europe in ship cargo). The Melomys are quite cute. They are nocturnal and good climbers in rainforest trees and mangroves. The first three types of rats mentioned are indigenous Australian rats that do not come near housing. The sewer rat and ship rat are not nice. They are the ones that are the scavengers and get into housing and rubbish dumps etc. and can carry disease.
Nice reply cementafriend – I’d like to add to that from my experience trapping rats and small marsupials for surveys that our native bush rats are charming little things and I’ve often wondered why we persist with the raising of rattus and norvegicus in Oz for pets and research when we’ve these little guys to work with instead. R. fuscipes was always a hoot – after releasing one you’d just caught and inspected they’d d wait at your feet for you to bait and set the humane trap so they could skip back in for the free lunch again.(trap happy we called it) and so you’d have to shoo him off and set the trap elsewhere.
So Karl, if you and enough other curiosity seekers keep on trapping the little critters so you can study them, pretty soon you too will have all of them in your museum drawers, so future generations of museum goers can see what they were like before you all extincted them.
You could try using a digital SLR camera to take pictures of them outside of your traps where they belong.
G
Well colour me confused.. I said I released them.. The trapping was for ag department and WA museum range distribution and population surveys, they were weighed, measure, given a dot of colour and released.. Not that they seemed keen or release, but whether or not they liked it they were sent packing. My comment was about the fact they were so friendly that resetting the trap in the same location only resulted in the same rats being caught over and over again. Was I that unclear?
PS DSLR’s were about 20 years away from being invented at the time I was doing this, though I have some film images of various R. fucipes hugging my assistant (and some others of Antechinu sp. mauling thumbs and trying to drag their human prey off into the undergrowth).
Hum……. is that some Monty Python thing?
I mean, horror, we have lost some kind of rat… ?
http://cdn.niketalk.com/9/9e/200x200px-ZC-9ea7e000_are-you-serious-wtf-meme-baby-face.jpg.ffe3a456188aed36f6942214f24fc19a.jpeg
From Wiki:
The 3.62-hectare (8.9-acre) sand cay is predominately grassland, with 1.72 hectares (4.3 acres) covered in grasses.
From their article on the rat:
Australia’s most isolated mammal, the Bramble Cay melomys was known only from a small population in Bramble Cay, a vegetated coral cay of 340 by 150 metres (1,120 ft × 490 ft).
Bramble Cay is a football field sized chunk of land sticking out of the ocean. The rat’s probably drowned in a storm. End of story.
PA,
And now, for the rest of the story: https://www.ehp.qld.gov.au/wildlife/threatened-species/documents/bramble-cay-melomys-survey-report.pdf
Includes dogs chasing them, and folks from New Guinea bopping them with sticks. Also, vegetative cover of .19hA, as well as sea water inundation.
Specifically cyclone Monica in 2006. In the 2004 survey they only found 12 animals left due to inbreeding and guano buildup from nesting seabirds that reduced the vegetation cover. Inbreeding caused extirpation of the Isle Royale wolfpack in Lake Superior. Nothing to do with CAGW.
Izzat extirpation anything like extinctication ?? So That Isle Royale experiment went pear shaped just like the Pruitt Igoe experiment in St. Louis Mo ??
G
Killed off by turtles! In 2011 they nested pretty well all the way to the centre of the island, disturbing the ground and food supply.
Darn “climate change” killed the dinosaurs, the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon.
What will the come up with next?
99% of all species are extinct.
If you can work that into a guilt trip, WWF and their ilk will beat a path to your door.
And warm weather killed the mastodons! Not to mention what killed the dinosaurs…
97% always sounds more believable. Ask Lewandowsky.
we’re all supposed to sharply draw in our breath at the ‘mad made’ part silly!
OK, sceptics have had to vet the terrible state of our biased climate temp recordings, find hordes of missing penguins, polar bears, caribou, Edith Spotted butterflies (the debunked butterfly researcher got the climate blues and retired) and walruses… does anyone know any rat wranglers to sort this out. I wonder if the researchers simply knocked it off. They trapped the poor sucker in 2004, which is 11yrs ago. How long do they live any way? How is one rat of unknown age and no mate going to be able to continue its species? Died of Climate change, any person who isn’t brain dead would call this BeeEss
They have been harassing the little brighter for decades. They trapped 42 of them in 2004! Remember researchers wiped out the Golden Toad in Costa Rica by contaminating them with an epidemic of fungus from a Sth African Toad that was on their equipment after a world wide search for the ideal extract from frogs for detecting pregnancy in humans? They lied about this tragedy caused by incompetence. They are lying about this too
Pervasive, unrelenting propaganda results in brain-numbing in some people so that they cannot tell the difference between facts and bullshit anymore. Either that, or they figure they’d better “go with the flow” and join the chorus to burn the witch lest they themselves be fired, targeted or harassed.
Come on, the associated press put this report out there and that accurate source of climate doom Canada’s CBC, David Suzuki’s paycheck, so must be true.
..News Flash !! WUWT has caused the extinction of CAGW alarmists all over the world !! Liberal brain cells (highly uncommon) have been witnessed to explode upon contact with this radical website !! More to follow at 11:00 !!
Those rats are FOREIGN INVADERS who were left there by ships coming from Europe. They are not native species.
Actually they are indigenous. Many other rodent species arrived with Europeans, but these rodents predate even the aboriginal human inhabitants of Oz by millions of years.
I’d like to see the evolutionary tree of indigenous rats on the mainland before I go getting my knickers in a bunch.
Humans are an Endangered species,,,,because liberals still exist ! IMHO…