For an Australian marsupial facing extinction on a continent-wide scale, the news of an oncoming drought back in 2001 probably felt like the coming of the end times.
But in a surprising break from the narrative, the ampurta (Dasycercus hillieri) a rat-sized predatory marsupial that was listed as Endangered in 1999, thrived through the lean times when other animals could not.
We often read narratives that climate change will increase the rate of species extinctions because of intensifying weather patterns, but scientists studying the ampurta in Australia offer another narrative.
“Despite unprecedented and prolonged drought during the study period, ampurtas increased their known range by >48,000 km2, an area larger than Denmark, even extending into areas where their status was ‘presumed extinct,'” wrote the authors—a team of 5 from the Center for Ecosystem Science, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.
The study is a fascinating and encouraging reminder of that most beloved and quotable parable in biology: that life, uh, finds a way.
Australian wildlife face greater risks of extinction than life in most other geographical areas, and though conservation efforts have lodged undeniable victories in conserving the endemic populations of mammals, these rarely graduate into landscape-level successes.
This is primarily due to the burden and presence of three invasive species: rabbits, and the foxes and feral cats which hunt them. Booms in the rabbit population following rainfall cause booms in the population of these invasives which chowed down on the ampurtas and other endemic marsupials. But eventually, Mother Nature throwed a lifeline to the little ampurta.
Looking at the first 2 decades of the 21st century, Australian climate and biological history in the country’s arid and semi-arid landscapes showed a fascinating phenomenon.
The rainfall which caused a boom in the country’s rabbit population also brought on Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus, which significantly reduced the population at the same time that the country experienced an 8-year-long drought, known as the Millennium Drought (2001 – 2009).
Being listed as Extinct in the Wild in several Australian states, the drought allowed the ampurta, with its flexible, omnivorous diet and low water requirements, to greatly repopulate the areas it was extirpated from.
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Further monitoring included another drought from 2017 to 2019, followed by average rainfall, which again demonstrated that it is in fact the drought phase when the ampurta expand and thrive, to the point at which the International Union for the Conservation of Nature listed the animal—which had been close to extinction in 1999, to one of “Least Concern” in 2019.
“[The] increase in global extent of occurrence for ampurta, achieved during severe drought, is one of the clearest recent examples of native mammalian re-expansion under climate extremes. This is a rare and hopeful conservation signal,” the authors write.
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Given Australia’s extreme breadth, landscape conservation efforts are hugely expensive and are therefore rarely undertaken and often unsuccessful. The bill for the recovery of the ampurta, however, was picked up by Mother Nature, and the authors of the study suggest that other species should be studied during drought periods to see if they too share the ampurta’s resilience.
If it were the case that multiple species thrived during periods of low rainfall, it would offer the best opportunities for assisted recovery efforts such as reintroductions in places where they’re absent, like New South Wales state, where the ampurta is still extinct.
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