Here are a few of my observations:
1. I remember going for walks in the countryside in Malta (mostly the Mellieha area) when I was a child (that's over 30 years ago


2. This disappearance does not seem to have ocurred in Gozo, where you still see hundres of lizards wherever you walk in the countryside.
3. Strangely enough lizards in Malta are still quite abundant in urban areas. You see many around the streets of Attard where I live (my kids and I feed one-winged flies to our adopted lizard in the back yard). Even Marsa Industrial Estate where I work is full of them.
4. Having read the sad story of the Selmunett lizard's apparent extinction in this forum, I question whether this can definitely be attributable to rats or whether it is part of the overall decline in lizard rural poputation in Malta.
The most logical explanation is that possibly pesticides may have killed the lizards in Malta, but wouldn't they use the same pesticides in Gozo as in Malta. And would this explain the disappearance of lizards in Malta even from remote areas far from agricultural land?
Maybe a disease that did not make it to Gozo? But why would populations in urban areas not be affected? And why wouldn't populations recover after so many years? It should not be so difficult for lizards to move from urban to rural areas.
Maybe a predator or poisonous plant introduced in the Maltese coutryside but not in Gozo or urban Malta?
Does anyone have a better explanation?