Goodbye to Melomys rubicola, first mammal extinct because of climate change

We had known him for only a hundred years and we have already lost him for ever. Goodbye to the small rodent Melomys rubicola, which has a sad record: it is the first mammal declared extinct in the world due to climate change.

There was no trace of this particular rat-like animal for about ten years: the last time it had been sighted in 2009 in the same place where it has always lived, the little island of Bramble Cay, between Papua New Guinea, Australia and the Torres Strait.

A tiny piece of land and sand, just five hectares, with coasts just over three meters high, where some animals, including sea turtles and some species of birds, lived peacefully until recently. The real star of the island was the rodent, also known as "Melomys of Bramble Cay", classified by the British zoologist Oldfield Thomas in 1924.

However, this mammal, one of the most isolated in the world, was declared a few years ago near extinction by the University of Queensland biologists who indicated, among the main causes of his death, the effects of man-made climate change.

Before being classified, the rodent had already been sighted in 1845, when it was initially mistaken for a large rat. In 1987, however, there were some studies on the populations of Melomys that indicated several hundred specimens on the island: they lived in small burrows dug into the ground.

In the 2000s, after an alarming shortage of specimens in Bramble Cay had already been reported since 1983, new research has been carried out up to a report in 2014 which virtually decreed the imminent disappearance. On 18 February 2019 the Australian government, in a brief note of the Minister of the Environment Melissa Price, then declared it definitively extinct.