Zoologists in Australia are sounding the alarm: only a few hundreds pigmy possums now live in the wild of Australia and their life is further endangered by climate change.
A change of just one degree centigrade in the average yearly temperatures could wipe out the remaining possums.
The pigmy possum could become, within a decade, the first casualty of climate change in that continent.
This fact is almost as stunning as the realization that the small animals are some of the oldest inhabitants of the earth. They have roamed Oceania for 25 million years, but only about 2500 of them have survived to this date.
They live in the Snowy Mountains that run between Victoria and New South Wales states.
A paleontologist, M. Archer, believes that the change of temperatures could wipe out the species in many different ways. The small mammals hibernate in rock piles during the six month long winter season, where they use the blanket of snow to insulate themselves from the frigid stones. Also, if the snow fails to come, the possums could wake prematurely and die of starvation, since they forage exclusively of mountain plums.
Scientists in Australia are trying to establish a colony of the pigmy possums in a different area of the lowlands so that they can get used to the climate change and hopefully survive.
Source:Guardian UK 3.28.13
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