Incredible breakthrough for rare creature on tiny predator-free island: 'Australian first'
There are renewed hopes the population of the critically endangered blue-tailed skink may be restored.
There is renewed hope for the population of an incredibly rare and critically endangered reptile after they have been discovered to be thriving on a tiny and predator-free remote island.
The blue-tailed skink is native to Christmas Island, but was nearly wiped out in the 1990s by an invasive threat. Swift action by Parks Australia meant 66 skinks were rescued and put into a captive breeding program developed in partnership with Taronga Zoo Sydney Conservation Society in 2010.
In 2019, 296 of the skinks, also known as Cryptoblepharus egeriae, were released into the wild on Australian territory Pulu Blan, in the Cocos Islands, a small archipelago halfway between Australia and Sri Lanka. Incredibly, five years later the population has exploded, with an estimated 4,531 skinks "thriving" on the island.
"It’s amazing what we’ve achieved in a relatively short space of time," Christmas Island's senior threatened species program coordinator Brendan Tiernan told Yahoo News Australia.
"There were less than 100 individuals of both species left on the planet. We were able to rescue them from the wild and raise them in captivity, and have them in a position where they are being returned to the wild, albeit not Christmas Island."
Invasive threat to skink species on Christmas Island
According to Tiernan, the major threat to the skink species was the invasive predator wolf snakes. Commonly found in the Indo-Australian Archipelago, they were first detected on the island in 1988 near the wharf.
"They would have arrived on one of the ships that came in from the north from either Indonesia or Malaysia. Once they arrived, there was either one female that was pregnant or a male and female and they just populated the island from there," he said.
"Our lizards have evolved on Christmas Island and were completely naive of snake predators and have no defence against them. The wolf snake itself is a specialist predator of small reptiles. So it made short work of our endemic species."
Since the snake species is "very cryptic and hard to detect" being nocturnal and spending a lot of time either underground or high up in trees, it means that eradicating the species isn't "a matter of going out and catching them".
It left both the skinks, and fellow native species Lister's geckos, on the brink of extinction. Swift action by Parks Australia in partnership with the Taronga Zoo Sydney Conservation Society Australia meant that 66 skinks were rescued and held in a captive breeding program.
By 2016, their population swelled to over 2,000 and at that point, Tiernan said "we realised we need to do something about getting them back into the wild."
After a feasibility study, it was determined that remote Cocos Islands were the best-suited location where 296 skinks were released over two small islands no bigger than two hectares in 2019. "Choosing a small island we can respond to a threat quickly, and monitor the success really quickly as well." he explained.
Five years later, the population has burst to nearly 5,000. "That's gone extremely well," Tiernan said.
"This is the first reptile translocation in Australia and the fact that translocations are fraught with risk and they don’t always succeed, we’re so fortunate that everything has gone better than we have possibly hoped for."
What's next for the skink?
The top goal is to get the species back on Christmas Island, but "a lot needs to go right before that is a reality." The next step involves releasing the skinks on a third, larger island, and also looking to release a population of the Lister's geckos as well.
Back on Christmas Island, the major threat to the species, the snakes, needs to be addressed too. "While it's present on the island we can't release them because they will just eat them after we release them," he said.
Authorities are working to lure and trap the snakes by using a pheromone or "biochemical signature" to attract the snakes.
More hope for Aussie skinks in Queensland
It's not the only good news for skinks across the country recently. Last year, a lizard so rare it hasn't been seen in over 40 years was rediscovered at a spot in northeast Queensland. The Lyon’s grassland striped skink hadn't been seen in the wild since 1981 until an expedition to find the creatures in April.
In Melbourne, researchers announced they had been working to conserve the Victorian grassland earless dragon which had not been seen since the 1960s.
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