Tokyo — Three species of reptile on Christmas Island, an Australian territory, 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 International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) latest report. "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. Populations of reptiles on Christmas Island, an Australian territory just south of Indonesia, have been declining rapidly since the 1970s, the IUCN said. While scientists speculate that a snake introduced in the 1980s or changes in the environment following the introduction of the yellow crazy ant could be to blame, "the reason for the decline remains unclear", according t...
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