These Tiny Creatures Were Almost Extinct, But a Surprising Impact of Climate Change Brought Them Back

Nestling in the arid deserts of Southern Australia, there is a creature that has resurrected itself from the mouth of death. Known in the 1990s to be swinging in the dunes of South Australia’s Simpson Desert, these marsupials, called “ampurtas,” were beginning to go extinct, driven by the precursors of climate change, biodiversity extinction crisis, and habitat loss. An intense drought in 2001 made it look like these ampurtas were nearing their end times. But then, life unleashed a miracle, and Australia was once again rumbling with these mouse-sized creatures, according to a study published in the journal Biological Conservation. Now, these guys are making a comeback.

According to the Department for Environment and Water, the crest-tailed, carnivorous marsupial has some magnanimous abilities. Not only can it extract water from food, but it can also survive endless periods of drought. It is fierce, fast, and ferocious when it comes to hunting and breeding. Following the 2001 drought, these marsupials found themselves on the verge of extinction. The population was dwindling, which was unsurprising given that their name was listed as Endangered in 1999. “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’,” the researchers noted in the paper. 

They used track plots to quantify the extent and rate of expansion from 2015 to 2021, also modelling potential environmental drivers and future climate scenarios. The experiment revealed that a significant dry period offered a variety of adaptive advantages to the creatures, including flexible diet and physiological adaptations to low-energy expenditure, potentially adding to their resilience in environmental extremes. The reason, researchers noted, why these creatures had been going extinct was likely rabbit biocontrol, as well as the burdensome presence of invasive species, including rabbits, foxes, and feral cats. A rainfall that triggered the propagation in the country’s rabbit population also infected the land with Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus, which significantly reduced their population. 

This was also the time when the country was experiencing an 8-year-long drought, known as the Millennium Drought, between 2001 and 2009. The drought, interestingly, enabled the ampurtas’ omnivorous diet and low-water requirements to greatly repopulate the areas they were extirpated. Another monitoring experiment held between 2017 and 2019 revealed that these ampurtas thrive only in the drought phase. “[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,” researchers said, concluding the study.

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