There are no more of these in the whole world. Image: (Luke Leung/University of Queensland)
The climate is warming up, and the sea level is rising. These are documented facts. There seems to be some confusion when it comes to the argument, though: the argument isn’t whether or not climate change is happening–which it is, and it has, and will continue to do, whether we’re around or not–it’s whether or not we’re causing it to speed up. Those who are straight up climate change deniers are stupid. I’m going to side with nearly every respected scientific organization on the planet and say we have something to do with it. Then, inevitably, someone will call me a “libtard” and spout some nonsense about Al Gore. But whatever you believe, according to a report from the University of Queensland, rising sea levels due to warming climates have risen enough to force a tiny rodent to extinction. It’s thought to be the first mammal to go extinct from climate change, and it won’t be the last.
Bramble Cay melomys, or mosaic-tailed rats, lived in a very small place: a tiny little chunk of coral reef near Queensland called Bramble Cay. The mammal is a basically a rat, which is unfortunate because no one pays attention to rats. But these rats were a harbinger, of sorts.
The rodents lived in on an island in the Torres Strait of the Great Barrier reef, and according to National Geographic, was last seen in 2009. Since then, though, not one has been seen. The island, called Bramble Cay, is tiny. With a high-point around 9 feet above sea level, there’s not much there save for (as the name implies) brambles and driftwood. The rats loved it.
According to reports, the first rats were seen on Bramble Cay in the mid-1800s. As rat populations will do, their numbers rose to several hundred by the early-’80s. But during the ’90s, the already-small island they called home shrunk from just under 10 acres to 6.2 acres. Much of the vegetation on the island died, and the rodents lost 97% of their habitat.
“The key factor responsible for the extirpation (a fancy word for local extinction) of this population was almost certainly ocean inundation of the low-lying cay, very likely on multiple occasions, during the last decade, causing dramatic habitat loss and perhaps also direct mortality of individuals,” a team of researchers from Queensland’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection wrote. “For low-lying islands like Bramble Cay, the destructive effects of extreme water levels resulting from severe meteorological events are compounded by the impacts from anthropogenic climate change-driven sea-level rise.” Anthropogenic, for those out there that like the word libtard, means “chiefly of environmental pollution and pollutants originating in human activity.” Those researchers are SUCH libtards!
Anyway, back to actual science. In the last 100 or so years, global sea level has risen nearly 10 inches. That might not sound like a lot, but when you think about the size of the ocean and add 10 inches to the top… it is. And yes, it has happened in the past. But around the Torres Sea (among many other places) it’s risen twice as fast as the global average in the last decade. Read more about that here. Or don’t, and continue saying that scientists that spend decades researching these things have more of an agenda than the scientists hired by oil companies. Your choice!
“There is almost no doubt the Bramble Cay melomys is extinct, said James Watson of the University of Queensland to the New Scientist. “There is no doubt that this is caused by habitat loss due to sea level rise.”
The authors of the study on the mosaic-tailed rat are warning that this is just an indicator of what’s to come. Lee Hannah, a senior scientist at Conservation International, says up to 1 in 5 species are at risk from climate change. “Certainly some species will benefit from climate change, but most will see reduced ranges,” he says.
According to Hannah, it’s animals that have nowhere to go that are at the highest risk. Creatures on mountains and on small islands have nowhere to go. There are things that can still be done, though. Apart from the obvious things that everyone knows they should be doing about the rapidly deteriorating state of our planet, animal relocation as needed and designing protected areas are two options that researchers recommend. Let’s be honest, though. That’s not going to happen. Instead, we’ll just stand around denying that anything is happening. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.
