348 N. F. Angeli and L. A. Fitzgerald


FIG. 1 Historic and recent land cover in St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. (a) The historic map from 1750 was created by J. Cronenberg and J. von Jaegersber (reproduced with permission of Copenhagen Archives). (b) This map was digitized to show historic land-cover types. Landscape transformation and introduction of mongooses led to the extirpation of the now Endangered St Croix ground lizard Pholidoscelis polops. (c) Land-cover classifications of 2016, matched to the digitized historic land-cover types. Establishment of protected areas, land spared from agriculture, and suburban development resulted in emergent land-cover types, which now include potential habitats for the St Croix ground lizard.


FIG. 2 Suitable habitat for the St Croix ground lizard on St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. We used a predictive habitat suitability model, with suitability categories based on threats, land-cover types and ongoing conservation efforts.


and Buck Island indicate that once established, populations grow rapidly and disperse into unoccupied available habitat (Fitzgerald et al., 2015).OnBuck Island, the newly established population expanded rapidly, with a marked dispersal front emanating from the point of introduction (Angeli et al., 2018). This indicates high potential for dispersal on mainland St Croix once founder populations are established. Lindenmayer et al. (2008,p. 134) suggested, ‘novel eco- systems present major challenges to traditional thinking in


conservation ecology, such as the focus on species extinc- tions as the usual response to landscape transformation.’ Understanding the landscape of threats and using that knowledge to adjust conservation actions can present posi- tive opportunities for restoration of species and rewilding ecosystems (Jordan, 2000).Weexamined land-cover change on St Croix spanning 250 years and documented landscape transformations that led to extirpation of the St Croix ground lizard. The primary factors in this extirpation were deforestation, land conversion for agriculture, and introduc- tion of mongooses. In recent decades land has been spared from agriculture, protected areas have been established, and invasive species including mongooses are increasingly man- aged. This recent transformation of land use in St Croix has facilitated emergence of land cover that includes suitable habitat for the St Croix ground lizard. Using a prioritiza- tion scheme, we identified potential reintroduction sites that could increase the area occupied by the St Croix ground lizard by 180%. In previous studies, a predictive approach using demographic data demonstrated that sufficiently low levels of threats could allow reintroductions of the Iberian ibex in western Iberia, and the North Island robin


Oryx, 2021, 55(3), 344–351 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605319001091


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