And then there were none: Australia’s only shrew declared extinct

It’s official: the only Australian shrew is no more.

The latest edition of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List, the world’s most comprehensive global inventory on extinction risk, has declared the Christmas Island shrew is extinct.

Shrews are small, long-nosed, insect-eating mammals, with many species widely distributed across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. On mainland Australia, similar roles are filled by unrelated small marsupials such as dunnarts, antechinuses, planigales and ningauis, which are themselves not writ large on our national consciousness.