Three species of reptile vanish from island

Three species of reptile on Christmas Island, an Australian territory south of Indonesia, have been declared extinct in the wild and scientists cannot understand how it happened.

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. “The cause remains unclear,” said Prof John Woinarski.