Professional wildlife biologist Dr Art Polkanov will be presenting the results of the tenth annual reptile survey, conducted on Rangitoto and Motutapu Island Reserves and the sixth one after the official declaration of pest free status of both islands in 2011. The survey involves the use of pitfall traps, artificial refuges and lizard houses at 22 monitoring stations, and active day and night searches which resulted in detection/capture/processing of 1483 lizards of six species in 2017 alone. The trends we found, lizard population growth and range expansion, are related to positive effects of the multi-species pest eradication. Reptiles have become the best indicators of the ecosystem health.
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Public talk