At first glance, a valley dragon doesn’t seem to have much in common with a grizzly bear or a condor.
Though it has a striking look, large adults can measure a very non-intimidating 15 inches from nose to tail tip. They boast pale stripes and dark spots along their backs. In summer, the males flush to a peachy-orange underneath, and females present fiery orange splashes along their sides.
However, until recent years, running into one wasn’t very likely. The Central California lizard — officially named blunt-nosed leopard lizards (Gambelia sila) — was one of the first animals covered by the initial Endangered Species Act nearly 60 years ago.
When the Fresno Chaffee Zoo sent a team to round up some of the dragons from a particularly vulnerable subspecies for its emergency captive breeding population, they managed to find seven.
The Walnut Creek-based conservation group Save Mount Diablo is helping the population with a $5,240 grant for a custom weather station to aid research about the lizards’ needs.
“I was 12 when I first learned about blunt-nosed leopard lizards, and 58 when I first saw them in the wild,” Seth Adams, Save Mount Diablo’s land conservation director, said in a statement. “The very first U.S. list of threatened and endangered species in 1966 included 78 species, some quite notable: California condors. Ivory-billed woodpeckers. Grizzly bears, timber wolves. Florida panthers, key deer and manatees. San Joaquin kit fox. American alligator. San Francisco garter snake. And the blunt-nosed leopard lizard.
“Four of them were from the Diablo Range. Just three were reptiles. Remarkably, most of those 78 endangered species are in better shape today,” Adams said.
The group said the lizards vanished from 85 percent of their San Joaquin Desert habitat — in the Diablo Range, Carrizo Plain, and southwestern San Joaquin Valley.
“Blunt-nosed leopard lizards originally inhabited millions of acres of the San Joaquin Desert, as well as the intermountain valleys nearby, such as the Carrizo Plain,” said Joseph Belli, a wildlife conservation biologist and expert on the lizards and the Diablo Range. “They ranged at least as far north as Stanislaus County and there’s a highly credible record of one spotted near Corral Hollow as recently as 1960.”
Conservationists were especially concerned four years ago about how quickly the population could disappear, especially with its short lifespan in the wild — about two or three years.
Since then, the zoo has hatched more 150 lizards, 17 of which the zoo released back into the wild in 2023 and another 20 this year. It will release 100 per year until 50 or more natural-born females successfully reproduce for three consecutive years.
Lizards leave the zoo with radio telemetry backpacks to track their progress. The weather station will track temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, and more. The station was installed in the Panoche region in November.
The station also tracks crucial factors specific to blunt-nosed leopard lizards, like solar radiation, soil temperature, and soil moisture, which will help biologists finally assess how climate variations affect the lizards. The data will allow the zoo to assess how annual variations in climate affect lizard habitat, colonization, and persistence.
“When I learned the zoo was conducting an emergency breeding program and already had some success, I immediately wanted to get Save Mount Diablo involved,” Adams said. “We’ve helped with lots of rare wildlife projects, from reintroducing peregrine falcons to Mount Diablo to aiding the California condor program at Pinnacles. This is another step south in our Diablo Range expansion, with new partners in a new geography.”
“I can’t wait, and I’m so excited to maybe witness young leopard lizards bred at the zoo being released this spring,” he said.
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