Bocourt’s Terrific Skink

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The sea is far away, but I hear it. And I smell something. Not worms. Not insects, spiders or birds or eggs or rats. Smells different. Smell meat. Smells meat so I want it. It looks like meat too, but not animal. It’s piled up in the clearing. No shape, just meat. And different smell. I do not like it. Rat can have it.

I do not like rats. Rats eat my food. Rats eat the small lizards. Rats eat the spiders. Rats eat everything and I eat rats. Sometimes. They are hard to catch, but I catch them. I eat everything. I am loud and big and I break things when I walk and rats are afraid of me.

I see something else. Smells like nothing, but its black and smooth. Not animal. It stares at me and makes a clicking noise. I don’t care. I ignore it. Doesn’t smell like meat. Doesn’t scare me.

The air tastes like sea. Sea and then lizard. Small lizard. Smell meat. Smells good. Smells close. The lizard is lying out on the trail, exposed. Still. Quiet. I drag myself towards it. I am quiet now, all the leaves, branches and rocks are gone away. Nothing for the lizard to hide behind. I go up and show it my teeth. I swallow it. It is good. Smells good, tastes good. I swallow it and swallow it.

Another black and smooth and not-animal thing clicks at me from the bush as I eat. I do not like them, so I drag myself towards the sea.

Do not like the sea either. It is too big. Bigger than me. But I am full and the sand is warm. I wade towards a tree and climb. I am very heavy, but a good climber. I sit out on a thick branch and start to fill up with sun. I am very heavy. And the sea is close, but I’m not scared of it. The sun is so warm and the morning tastes good.

And then the sun disappears. Open my eyes. Something big is standing next to the tree. Big. Bigger than me. And it isn’t rat or lizard or even bird, but it reaches out with a big claw and grabs me. It rips me off the branch. And it turns me over.

When I lifted the specimen from the branch, I was surprised at how docile it was. Given that it is the apex predator on the Isle of Pines (or Île des Pins, as the French named it), one would think the Bocourt’s Terrific Skink would not be used to being so handily subdued. But it stayed perfectly still in my grip, making no attempt to writhe away or show its broad, curved teeth.

This particular specimen had seemed nonplussed by the dog food we had left as bait on the trail leading from the sea to the centre of the island. It had taken one of the dead lizards we’d laid out though. It’s fortunate that we caught it in the act, as removing all the stones and leaf litter from the trail had made the skinks easier to spot, but difficult to track. Presumably it had also been caught on one of the cameras that we had placed further along the trail as well, and I was eager to go through the pictures later and see if any more specimens had been photographed. For now, I focused on the one which was literally at hand. It was strange to think I was holding a species that had been considered extinct only 9 years before.

The species was originally discovered sometime around 1879 when the famed collector, Monsieur Balanza, visited the islands of New Caledonia. A specimen was given to the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and the species was first described by naturalist Paul-Louis-Antoine Brocchi, in 1876. After this, the species was not seen again for 127 years.

In 2003, an expedition from the museum travelled to New Caledonia to study sea snakes off the coasts of the small islands there. Upon one islet, just off the coast of Île des Pins, expedition member Ivan Ineich found something else instead. Bocourt’s terrific skink, it turned out, had not disappeared from the world; it had simply been presiding over its remote kingdom here in the midst of the Pacific Ocean.

The name “Bocourt” was given to the lizard in honour of Marie-Firmin Bocourt, a French artist and zoologist, who was the first to recognise it as a previously unknown species. The other half of the creature’s Latin name, Phoboscincus bocourti, however, literally translates to “Fear-skink”. This speaks volumes to the animal’s impressive size and fearsome teeth. At 50 cm in length, it is one of the largest lizard in New Caledonia and has dominated Île des Pins (which itself is a mere 0.5 sq. kilometres) since the extinction of the larger reptiles that once lived there.

The skink is now the apex predator, leaving nothing safe from its rather unique teeth. Running a finger beneath its lip, I recorded their curious design; broad and sharp, but not sharply pointed. It was rather difficult to discern exactly what the skink’s diet consists of. Indeed, it seems that they have evolved to eat everything that strays onto their island. On the morning that Ineich rediscovered the species in 2003, it had been running swiftly through the forest and he theorised that it was searching for smaller litter skinks which would be out at that time, attempting to soak up the sunshine. When not chasing down prey, the Bocourt’s terrific skink strides about in the style of a monitor lizard; their strength clearly exhibited in their swagger. They hunt almost everything and fear, presumably, nothing. Yet as its tightly-muscled ribs tensed against my fingers, it was difficult not to imagine that the animal I was holding was not afraid.

Now that humans have begun to encroach upon Île des Pins, the skink’s survival becomes increasingly precarious. In the last 10 years, a small tourist trade offering idyllic getaway day trips to the island has sprung up. Tourists rarely brave the densely overgrown, thorny and forested interior of the island, but their presence offers a great boon to another invader. One who has no qualms about penetrating every inch of the skink’s domain.

The Common rat is a wildly successful colonist. Fiercely adaptive, they are now found upon 80% of the world’s islands, where their omnivorous and expansive nature poses a very serious threat to indigenous species- especially predators. On Île des Pins, not only do they poach the Bocourt’s terrific skink’s prey, they also undermine the species population by consuming its eggs.

Due to the low-lying nature and small size of Île des Pins, it is also highly vulnerable to natural disasters like tsunamis and cyclones. Ineich even noted that, during their 2003 expedition, they had noticed severe erosion wearing away at the island’s coastline. We now estimate that less than 250 skinks survive upon Île des Pins, and it seems their kingdom may be literally disappearing beneath their feet.

However, we believe that the skink most likely survives on other nearby islands. While all the expeditions so far have been centred around the confirmed population on Île des Pins, the larger, neighbouring islands of Koutomo and the Presqu’île of Oro both seem perfectly capable of playing home to the species. And while there are no official mandates or laws currently protecting the skink, we hope that future expeditions to the islands will allow us to learn a great deal more about the species, and improve our ability to protect it.

After I released the Bocourt’s terrific skink, I watched it flee back into its forest home. I must say that I was surprised, firstly by how easily it scampered up a tree – digging in with those sharp claws – and then by how quickly it disappeared amongst the branches. For now, the skink will have to continue to fend for itself. As it always has. And despite the intrusion of the rats and the humans, it cannot be denied that this island still belongs to it.

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