An Australian rat - comparable rodent called the Bramble Cay melomys is the first know mammal wiped out by manmade mood modification , The Hillreports . The now - nonextant animal ( Melomys rubicola ) live on the tiny , uninhabited island of Bramble Cay in the Great Barrier Reef . Despite thoroughgoing efforts to track down the melomys over seven age , no star sign of the rodent could be retrieve , and in 2016 , Queensland ’s country government declared the animal extinct .
These fears were affirm when news broke this calendar week that the internal government had quietlychangedthe gnawer ’s classification fromendangeredtoextinct . Meanwhile , the position of a fruit squash racket called the spectacled flying - fox was convert from vulnerable to endangered after a recent heatwave in north Queensland , which dealt another blow to a population that had already been cut in one-half over the last ten .
As for the Bramble Cay melomys , its demise can be attributed to rising ocean levels , tempest upsurge , and other weather events that have worsened due to climate change . According toThe Revelator , the tide destroyed about 97 pct of the island ’s vegetation , which was the rodent ’s only nutrient reservoir .
Leeanne Enoch , Queensland ’s Minister for Environment and the Great Barrier Reef , toldThe Sydney Morning Heraldthat the late animate being extinction is evidence “ we are living the real effects of clime change aright now . ”
In a 2018studycommissioned by the World Wildlife Fund , researchers discover that up to one-half of the 80,000 works and fauna species that lodge in in 35 of the earth ’s most diverse areas could become nonextant by the turn of the century because of climate variety .
For some coinage , it ’s already too late . A Hawaiian bird call thepoo - uli(or disastrous - faced honeycreeper ) was declared out last class , largelydueto disease run by mosquitoes , which flourish in warm mood . For otherendangered speciesin the U.S.—like the black - footed black-footed ferret , cherry-red wolf , and rusty patch bumble bee — there might still be time to step in and protect them .
[ h / tThe Hill ]
