This Marsupial Was Only Discovered 5 Years Ago. Climate Change and Australia's Bushfires Are Driving It to Extinction

Andrew Baker knew he had found something special when he heard the hissing noise coming from inside the metal trap he and a team of researchers had set out in the rainforest in eastern Australia. None of the mouse-sized marsupials called antechinuses that he had been studying made a similar sound. Further research proved Baker, a mammalogist at Queensland University of Technology, right.

“If temperatures continue to ramp up, hot seasons lengthen and cooler seasons shorten, then during critical periods of forest recovery there are likely to be more fires,” Baker says. “This will only further jeopardize habitat stability and place any recovering animal populations at even higher risk of extinction.”

Haunting images of badly burned koalas and charred kangaroo carcasses have grabbed international attention and led to millions of dollars in donations for recovery efforts. But it’s the species with smaller habitats and fewer numbers that are more vulnerable to being wiped out. John Woinarski, a professor specializing in conservation biology at Charles Darwin University, says those conditions create particular concern for species with small populations and living ranges. He is worried about the future of animals like a forest-dwelling rat-kangaroo called the long-footed potoroo; the greater glider ; and several species of animals that live on Kangaroo Island in South Australia.

“I know the trees and the birds that nest in those trees and they’re all gone,” Teixeira says. “I was actually there the moment that the baby bird flew out of the nest, when it took its first flight and joined the flock,” she says of one nest. His team recently captured their first-ever video footage of the creatures, showing a female with joeys in her pouch. It was particularly hard on Hodgens to see the destruction in the area where the video was shot. “Where she lived and where she was probably rearing her young has been absolutely decimated by the fires, there’s nothing left of the habitat, that’s pretty devastating,” he says.

Source: Energy Industry News (energyindustrynews.net)

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