Lizards or snakes? The stark game of survival playing out in Ibiza

The growing trend for imported olive trees has brought hoards of invasive snakes to the Spanish island, threatening the future of its wall lizard

Far below the Ibiza sun, a solitary lizard fidgets across the baking rocks on the southern tip of the island, happily oblivious to what may lurk ahead.

After 6m years of isolated evolution, the Ibiza wall lizard, whose scaly finery runs from cobalt blue to acid green, is facing an existential threat summed up in the Catalan phrase sargantanes o serps: lizards or snakes. Over the past two decades, the wall lizards have completely disappeared from some areas of Ibiza and the neighbouring island of Formentera thanks to the rapid proliferation of invasive, non-venomous horseshoe whipsnakes and ladder snakes.