Farewell, Bramble Cay melomys. We killed you and you will be remembered as the first mammalian extinction caused directly by climate change: wiped off the planet by rising seas inundating its island home in the Torres Strait, off the north coast of Australia.

Perhaps not as charismatic as some endangered species, nevertheless this rodent – also known as the mosaic-tailed rat – should be getting as much attention as the panda, if not more. It is the beginning of a new wave of loss and we need to start to prepare ourselves for the grief that will inevitably follow.

Revealed: first mammal species wiped out by human-induced climate change Read more

We have been protected until now by an international focus on biodiversity. But while the rate of species extinction is many times higher than would be expected without the impact of people, most of us remain unaware of the organisms we will never have the opportunity to see. And we risk becoming complacent. We are not recognising the loss of life.

The latest RSPB Big Garden survey, published this morning, reveals what I already know from the hundreds of talks I have done about hedgehogs; fewer people are seeing them in their gardens. That is because there are far fewer around as the work of Hedgehog Street has shown. I have not seen one in my garden in the past three years.

And it is not just mammals that are becoming harder to see. I remember cycling home one warm summer evening and into the headlight I was wearing fluttered a moth. There was a surge of interest followed by the blast of realisation – that was the only moth I had seen on a ride that should have had me complaining as they cluttered my vision. I am not too proud to admit I cried.

You see we are in the midst of a crisis bigger than biodiversity loss; we are experiencing a staggering loss of bioabundance. Wildlife is trickling through our hands like sand and it is being replaced by us and our greed. Tony Juniper’s new book, What’s Really Happening to Our Planet, contains an alarming graphic that shows how 10,000 years ago 99.9% of the vertebrate biomass of the planet was wild – now the figure is just 4%. We, and the animals grown to feed the meat eaters, make up the other 96%.

This has a deeper importance. It reveals how far removed we are from any connection with nature – and the more that happens, the harder it becomes to persuade people to act in defence of something they do not know.

With connection we can shift from liking to loving, and with love comes the rage we need to motivate a real change

There is only so much that can be gained from watching Springwatch and David Attenborough. And there is a risk that this passive appreciation of wildlife will leave us thinking that we have experienced nature through a screen. It is not the real thing. For true love to develop there needs to be contact. And without an abundance of wildlife there can be no contact.

“We will not fight to save what we do not love,” said the American scientist Stephen Jay Gould. We also cannot love what we do not know. Bioabundance is what gives us the chance to make a connection with nature. With connection we have the chance of shifting from liking to loving, and with love comes the rage we need to motivate a real change. It may be too late for the Bramble Cay melomys, but there is still time to save hedgehogs.