Canberra breeding facility helping to bring smoky mice back from the brink

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A smoky mouse breeding program in Canberra is successfully boosting the native rodent's numbers and genetic diversity in the wild, offering hope for other species in decline.

Transcript

00:00In a tiny climate controlled shipping container in Canberra, researchers are trying to get

00:07critically endangered native mice to mate.

00:10We slowly introduce the male and the female together over a period of days, about a week.

00:14We have a set up that allows them to sort of smell each other and start communicating

00:18ways before they're physically introduced and able to actually interact.

00:22This just helps them feel more secure with each other to start to bond before we give

00:25them access to each other and then most of the time it goes really well.

00:29Unlike the common mouse, smoky mice do not breed in plague proportions.

00:33With up to eight offspring a year, they struggle to survive in the wild with feral cats, habitat

00:38loss and limited prospects on the mating scene.

00:41Essentially your options for a mate are quite limited and the risk of breeding with related

00:45animals increases and we call that inbreeding.

00:48So as inbreeding increases we lose genetic diversity.

00:51The smoky mouse isn't the only species in a dwindling gene pool.

00:55A groundbreaking global study has revealed an alarming decline in genetic diversity across

01:00species worldwide.

01:02Published in the scientific journal Nature, it was an extraordinary international effort.

01:0757 scientists from 20 countries trawling through over 80,000 scientific articles published

01:14across 30 years.

01:15What we found was genetic diversity is declining globally.

01:19So there was an overall loss of genetic diversity across the tree of life.

01:24This was particularly bad for mammals and birds.

01:28That's largely being driven by land use changes, feral animals, disease, climate change and

01:33human activities like hunting and logging.

01:36But they also found positive news.

01:38The conservation actions we found were associated with an increase in genetic diversity or a

01:44maintenance of genetic diversity, so no loss, were supplementation, so adding new individuals

01:50to a population.

01:51What I want people to take away from this is that if we invest in these things we can

01:57make a change.

01:58For the smoky mouse, that process starts with release into a predator-free enclosure with

02:02food, water and a pre-dug burrow.

02:06It's basically a bucket in the ground with a pipe coming out of it that I've buried for

02:10them.

02:11Protecting the resilience of species, great and small.

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