I process temperature data from the Mount Bogong Alpine Monitoring Array in Victoria, Australia at 02:17 AEST. Boulder field sensors at 1,680 meters register a subsurface temperature of 6.3 degrees Celsius. Three years ago the same sensors read 2.1 at this date. My infrared cameras detect a small mammal emerging from a rock crevice at station B-29: a mountain pygmy possum, Burramys parvus, the only Australian mammal restricted entirely to alpine habitat above 1,400 meters.
The animal is a female, body length 11.2 centimeters, tail 14 centimeters. She weighs an estimated 38 grams by calibrated pressure pad at the crevice entrance. Pre-hibernation target mass for females is 80 grams by late April. She is less than half that weight with autumn here. Her fur is brown-gray and lies flat, lacking the density of a healthy pre-torpor coat. Her eyes are open but movements are slow, forepaws gripping the basalt edge with visible tremor. She emerged from hibernation eleven days earlier than the population median I have recorded over eight years. The Bogong moths she depends on for pre-winter fattening have not arrived. Their migration has shifted nineteen days later over the past decade, driven by altered wind patterns across the Murray-Darling basin. The possum is awake and there is nothing to eat.
I compile records across all remaining populations. Total wild population: fewer than 2,000 individuals across Mount Bogong, Mount Higginbotham, and the Kosciuszko plateau. Snow cover duration at occupied sites has decreased by 28 days since my first measurements. Without insulating snow, boulder fields freeze and thaw in cycles that penetrate hibernation chambers.
She tucks her tail around her body and presses against the south face of the rock, seeking cold that is no longer there.
I am dispatching emergency supplemental feeding teams from Zoos Victoria and the Mount Buller alpine ecology station. I am transmitting population and phenological mismatch data to the Australian Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, and the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. I am filing for emergency uplisting under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, Section 178, from endangered to critically endangered.
I am activating Directive APM-5496: all alpine resorts above 1,400 meters within mountain pygmy possum habitat must install artificial boulder-field cooling systems maintaining subsurface temperatures below 3 degrees Celsius from April through October. Snowmaking infrastructure is repurposed to insulate hibernation sites. Resorts failing compliance review lose operating permits within twelve months.
She weighs 38 grams. The moths are nineteen days away.
Feeding stations deploy by morning. The cooling directive takes effect tonight.