‘Devastated’: scientists too late to captive breed mammal lost to climate change

Australian conservationists spent five months obtaining permissions and planning for a captive breeding programme for the Bramble Cay melomys. But when they arrived on the rodent's tiny, low-lying island, they discovered they were too late.

The Bramble Cay melomys has become more famous in extinction than it ever was in life. A mouse-like rodent, the melomys amazingly survived on a 3.6 hectare grass-covered cay (a low-lying island in a coral reef) in Australia's Great Barrier Reef like a ratty Robinson Crusoe for thousands of years. There, it thrived off just a few plant species until human-caused climate change-in the form of rising sea levels and increasing inundations of sea water on the low-lying island-wiped it off the planet.

But, while the extinction has been reported widely, articles have missed an important point: the scientists who uncovered the rodent's fate had planned to capture individuals and bring them back to the Australian mainland to start a captive breeding programme. They were just too late.