December 5, 2017
Three species of reptile on
Australia's Christmas Island have been declared extinct in the wild, according
to a study released on Tuesday, with scientists baffled as to the cause.
Lister's gecko, the blue-tailed
skink and the Christmas Island forest-skink were downgraded from "critically
endangered" to "extinct in the wild" in the latest report by the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
"The extinctions... are an
intriguing 'whodunnit', as their cause remains unclear," said John
Woinarski, professor of conservation biology at Charles Darwin University in
northern Australia.
The reptile population on
Christmas Island, an Australian territory just south of Indonesia, has been
declining rapidly since the 1970s, the IUCN said.
While scientists speculate that a
snake introduced in the 1980s or environmental changes following the
introduction of the Yellow Crazy Ant could be to blame, "the reason for
the decline remains unclear," according to the report.
Scientists tried in vain to
establish a captive breeding programme for the forest skink and it has now been
declared extinct in the wild.
Lister's gecko and the
blue-tailed skink both have "well-established" captive breeding
populations but are now also extinct in the wild.
"In this case, the extent
and severity of decline was revealed too late to save these Christmas Island
reptiles," said Woinarski.
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