The Courier-Mail
By: Brian Williams
Scientists fear the world's first localised climate change extinction of a major mammal species might have occurred in north Queensland.
An expedition into the cloudy forests of the Carbine Range to find the beautiful white lemuroid ringtail possum has failed.
The possum has not been seen on the Carbine Tableland, northwest of Cairns, in nearly four years and it is feared a temperature change of 0.8C is to blame.
Record high temperatures in 2005 may have caused a die-off because it takes only four or five hours of above 30C heat to kill the possum.
Its habitat is above 1100m, where temperatures are cooler.
Steve Williams, director of the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity and Climate Change at James Cook University, said yesterday funds were needed for another search.
"There are a few little peaks on the range where a population might be hanging in,'' Professor Williams said.
If the possum had died out it could be the first confirmed example of a mammal that had become extinct purely because of global warming.
It would be an unfortunate claim for Australia, which has the world's worst record of mammal extinctions. Of the 40 mammal species known to have vanished in the past 200 years, almost half have been Australian.
Professor Williams said a second population of the possums survived in good numbers on the Atherton Tableland but it was unclear how genetically distinct the two groups were because they both evolved separately through several ice ages.
Climate Change Minister Andrew McNamara said it had to be accepted that climate change might be the cause.
"Species found only in the wet tropics, such as the lemuroid ringtail possum and the golden bowerbird, are particularly sensitive to rising temperatures and face extinction if we cannot reverse a trend of rising temperatures,'' Mr McNamara said.
The struggle for animals to survive is featured in a DVD giveaway organised by The Courier-Mail and Sunday
Mail.