White lemuroid ringtail possum is Australia’s first native mammal victim of climate change, say scientists

THE white lemuroid ringtail possum is Australia’s first mammal on the brink of extinction under global warming.

SCIENTISTS believe the white lemuroid ringtail possum is Australia’s first mammal on the brink of extinction under global warming.

They claim the cute little possum – the symbol of Queensland’s Wet Tropics – is already “ecologically extinct’’.

Just four adults are known to still be alive in the only place on the planet where they exist – the high-altitude “cloud forests” of Mount Lewis in the Daintree rainforest, three hours’ drive north of Cairns.

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Experts say a severe heatwave in 2005 killed off most of the cool-adapted tree-dwellers when the rare species all but vanished and today they are unlikely to rebound in an ill-fated battle for survival.

Leading conservationists yesterday heard how the timid creature, which lives off leaf moisture and is only found in forest mountains above 300m, has replaced the polar bear as the “face of global extinction in climate change’’.

“They live on this tiny island in the sky,’’ said Australia’s James Cook University Vice-Chancellor Sandra Harding, speaking outside the World Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation conference in Cairns.

“It’s not the polar bear on the ice caps, but the white possum of the high-altitude tropical forests that is ecologically extinct, with just a few animals left, and facing complete extinction,’’ Ms Harding said.

In 2008, The Courier-Mail first reported grave fears for the survival of the iconic species before a series of expeditions deep into the rugged forests of the Carbine Ranges located the four survivors on an isolated peak.

The story made international headlines and became a touchstone for heated debate between scientists and climate change sceptics.

“As the world gets hotter, these creatures have nowhere to go,’’ tropical biology expert Professor Bill Laurance said yesterday.

“Their populations will wither and collapse until eventually they just disappear into heaven.

“They’ve all but disappeared.’’

Dubbed the “Dodo of the Daintree”, just four or five hours of temperatures over 30C could wipe out the highly vulnerable species, he said, because under extreme heat they are unable to maintain their body temperature.

They’ll climb higher to stay in the mountain mists, until they can climb no higher and die out, he said.