The San Antonio Zoo is working to save the Texas horned lizard, an iconic symbol of Texas and the Southwest. The zoo’s conservation team has been breeding and releasing the lizards onto a private ranch in Blanco County, where they are testing whether expanding such efforts could help the wild population sustain itself.
Conservation Efforts
The zoo’s conservation team, led by Bekky Muscher-Hodges, has been working with the lizards for over 10 years. They have a ‘lizard factory’ where they keep around 50 adult lizards in heat-controlled enclosures, incubate eggs, and care for baby lizards in a separate nursery.
The team uses a ‘speed dating’ process to breed the lizards, logging every pairing and swabbing every animal to confirm paternity through genetic testing. They also track the lizards’ genetic lineages to ensure that the populations are diverse enough to prevent inbreeding.
Challenges
Maintaining the lizard population is a complex effort. The lizards are preyed upon by many animals, including ox, owls, coyotes, snakes, and skunks. The team must also deal with the lizards’ specialized diet, which consists mainly of harvester ants.
Despite these challenges, the zoo’s conservation team is making progress. They have rediscovered some of the released lizards and may have found the first wild-born offspring of the breed-and-release program.
Original reporting: San Antonio Report — read the source article.
