Thread by @kate_g_evans

I've been writing about climate change for years, but reporting this story really got me. It brought me to tears several times but also made me hopeful and filled me with awe. The Australian Alps are beautiful, and home to unique and threatened plants and animals... a 🧵 (1/12)

They include the adorable mountain pygmy possum, which hibernates all winter under the snow, and was thought extinct until 1966 when some were caught raiding bacon in a ski lodge. There are only around 2500 of them & they're only found in this part of Australia above 1200m (2/12)

They wake up hungry in spring—just in time to gorge themselves on high-fat, high-protein bogong moths which migrate to the mountains in their billions to hide from the summer heat, sometimes in the very same rock crevices where the sleepy possums are awakening. (3/12)

Bogong moths are amazing too—they breed on the western plains, then fly 1000km to the mountains for the summer, then fly back again. Scientists like Eric Warrant @LundVision are discovering that they navigate using both their magnetic sense and by consulting the stars (4/12)

Both species are significant to Aboriginal peoples, especially the bogong moth, which has been a part of human celebrations for millennia. With Paul and Reuben House, I visited the Uriarra moth stone: a "feasting table" where their ancestors gathered to eat bogong moths (5/12)

But climate change is unsettling this fine-tuned relationship. Warming winters allow feral cats to reach the possums’ habitats. Without snow, their burrows get too cold, they wake too early, and there's no water to drink. Bushfires destroy food sources, too... (6/12)

...and severe droughts from 2017-2020 decimated the bogong moth population by an estimated 99.5 percent. In Victoria, baby possums starved in their mothers’ pouches. But people are also taking ambitious action to save them. (7/12)

@drmparrott and others @ZoosVictoria developed nutritious "bogong bikkies" which Linda Broome and team @nswenviromedia used to sustain the possums after the 2020 bushfires -- and it worked. Photo by @alexjpike (8/12)

And paleontologists and ecologists including Michael Archer & @peanut_possum @UNSW @unswbees have set up a breeding facility in the Blue Mountains to see if the possums can adapt to life at lower elevations, where their ancient ancestors used to thrive. (9/12)

As for bogong moths, last summer they again tiled the caves of Mt Gingera, near Canberra, but only in about half the numbers that were there before the drought. There's so much more & I hope you read the full feature here, with videos @bioGraphic: biographic.com/of-moths-and-m… (10/12)

Huge thanks to Linda Broome, to @JakelinTroy @Sydney_Uni for sharing her stories and songs of the snow Country, and to the team @bioGraphic including @SkylarWKKnight, @steventbedard for commissioning, and the wonderful @Sarah_Gilman for her inspired editing. (11/12)

(And to @IAMKP whose beautiful song "Rivers Run" became the soundtrack to my reporting.) Pics mine except where indicated. Thanks for reading! #marsupials #ClimateEmergency #MothsMatter #australianmammals #indigenousknowledge (12/12)

@IAMKP @Longreads love you to check this one out 💙

And thanks to @PeterCaley1 for answering lots of my bogong moth questions!