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
Bryant, et al (2011): “Melomys rubicola, found only on Bramble Cay, 50 km south of New Guinea, is more closely related to Australian Melomys, particularly M. capensis, than to any of the New Guinean species. Results suggest that M. rubicola and M. capensis last shared a common ancestor in the early Pleistocene, a time when land bridges existed connecting Bramble Cay to Cape York.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1463-6409.2011.00482.x/abstract;jsessionid=FA114A8F2C7C5F77B306D24068F4081E.f03t03?userIsAuthenticated=false&deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=
This is at odds with the later Queensland study, but at least it is based on genetics. Question is, if rubicula has been isolated for a million years, how did they survive Eemian sea levels? There must have been some intermediate safe haven involved where they have now been long extinct.
–AGF
I have some overly demanding bandicoots in my backyard. I’ll bet if we shipped a few of those over to Bramble Cay, no one would be able to tell the difference.
Actually, it was a Boom Town rat it killed off.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/climate-prat-of-the-year-award-2013/
Pointman
Impressing! Something that doesn’t exist has wiped out a rat ..
What will be the next?
Reading this story I became very curious,.. one of my quirks I guess.
Where exactly is Bramble Cay? A quick inquiry using DuckDuckGo to discover under “Bramble Cay Topo” resulted in an Australian Government site (see the link below). Sure enough there was an entry for the island.
Part of the reason that I started this search was prompted by seeing the transmitting tower stationed on the island. Its presence was to me blatant! I wonder what power level it runs at?
Many people on this thread have mentioned the actual issues that this species faced living on this land from its extremely limited area, and meager elevation, to its’ sparse vegetation. Add to that you have the narrow breeding environment that the creature lives (lived?) in and it would seem to me that the smallest of added stresses could have compounding effects.
According to the map I found, Bramble Cay is surrounded by shallow water and is about 217m long. Heck the larger transmission towers near me are usually located away from populated areas by many hundreds of meters. Did any one pay attention to the power regulations when it came to such a location? Something tells me that nobody skipped a beat in granting the permit to build the tower, IF a permit was even required, which I doubt it was. Such is the nature of bureaucratic thinking and behavior, in my experience.
Now I am not implying that I am paranoid about such technology and the effects of transmission radiation. However I am wondering if there are people on this thread who can also noodle over this situation? This small mammal had no place to go to avoid exposure to this towers transmissions. It’s reported that it nests under debris or in burrows. Those burrows cannot be too deep because the island is barely a few feet in elevation. The occasional below average tropical storm would seem to be sufficient enough to swamp the island. To me it’s astounding that this creature survived at all. It probably washed up on the shores of the island from some other not too distant land mass (see Google Maps view for its’ location).
Try this link for the map: http://www.ga.gov.au/cedda/maps/279?p=325&&&r=DATE_RELEASED&
I don’t want to get into the argument regarding radio frequency radiation.
However the construction of this tower would have required multiple humans tramping all over that island for several days straight. Crushing who knows how many nesting locations.
Then there is the regular maintenance of it.
What is the power source for this transmission tower and how does that impact the islands ecology.
If anyone is looking for a culprit, I suspect Charlie here has found the real one.
Any bets that this rat will be discovered again, just like that other paper that claimed global warming caused extinction?
Claims are flying that Global Warming has claimed its first mammal”
Hang on, I thought we’d already succeeded in wiping out a quarter of all species on Earth – or was it a third, it’s hard to keep track. Aren’t we in the middle of The Umpteenth Great Extinction Event, or some such nonsense?
I wish these catastrophists would try to keep their stories consistent, it’s ever so difficult keeping track of what I’m supposed to lose sleep over!
“It is possible that a catastrophic inundation of the island has already occurred ”
Hardly an expression to put into a scientific document. There should be plenty of signs of catastrophic inundation, especially given the time frame of just 12 years . Why don’t they do the job properly? Send some one who knows what they are doing. Speculation has no place within such issues given the likely public response to their suggestion
From the IUCN Red List, a main reference of endangered species. Emphasis mine:
I did like the term “inbreeding depression”, gave a great image of a bunch of bummed-out teenage mosaic-tailed rats looking at all their sister and brothers and cousins …
Regards,
w.