Buck Island Reef National Monument includes the 176-acre uninhabited Buck Island off the northeast coast of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It is best known for its coral reef, but it is also now a stronghold for one of the world's rarest lizards, the St. Croix ground lizard. Over roughly 20 years, the park worked to remove rats, mongooses, and exotic plants, making the island safe enough for 57 lizards to be moved there from Green Cay. The Park Service has informally estimated that more than 10,000 lizards live on the island today, although peer‑reviewed studies and Fish and Wildlife Service assessments report considerably lower numbers. The St. Croix ground lizard no longer lives on the main island of St. Croix, where it disappeared in the late 1960s, mainly because of agricultural habitat change and predation by small Indian mongooses, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports.
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