Tiny skink easy prey for cats and ferrets

James Reardon searched high and low before he could find even one skink for the camera. This is of the grand variety. Pictures / Amos Chapple

He has travelled from the other side of the world to the vast tussocklands of northeastern Otago, a former wildlife cameraman on a mission to save two species of lizard most New Zealanders have never heard of.

Only once does ecologist James Reardon's seemingly unshakeable confidence falter: when he talks about what might happen if this project fails.

"It's scary, because if this doesn't work, I'll be to blame," says the 31-year-old, who has a passion for reptiles and, in particular, grand and Otago skinks.

They are two of the country's most impressive lizards but prove elusive on this gloomy Monday morning at Macraes Flat, about an hour's drive north of Dunedin.

The weather isn't right for them, Reardon says, leaping from one skink hiding place to the next in hiking boots and brown weatherproof pants and vest, peering into dark and secret places in the grey rocks that cover these hills as if scattered by a giant hand.

Like most lizards, skink are essentially sedentary, he says. But on a sunny day they would emerge to sunbathe, feed and have sex. Today, in a blustery wind and showers of icy-cold rain, they're sensibly staying home, hidden deep within nooks and crannies where the temperature is probably a good five degrees warmer than it is outside.

East Otago skink country is familiar to most New Zealanders even if they've never been here, the yellow, tussock-covered hills the stuff of paintings and poetry, postcards and television pictures.

Endless clumps of tussock sway and ripple in the wind, hawks glide and soar against a grey sky. Sometimes it's so cold up here you can't think straight, Reardon says.

Before we began our skink hunt, which would last some hours, he stops off at a ramshackle house that serves as temporary home for Department of Conservation staff working in these desolate hills, running inside to pick up some gear and a sandwich. He munches hungrily as he steers a four-wheel-drive ferociously fast over rough farm tracks to a nearby reserve.

On this stretch of tussock-covered land gouged by valleys and dotted with giant rocks, the Department of Conservation is putting into action its latest plan to save remaining populations of skink, ring-fencing 22ha here with a predator-proof fence at a cost of $350,000.

To catch a skink involves inserting two long pieces of metal that look like extra-long knitting needles into places he thinks they will be hiding. At the end of each metal needle is a tiny nylon noose. Patience is required. Reardon jumps from rock to rock, throwing himself down to peer between cracks and over cliffs but is forced eventually to give up. We pile into the truck to try our luck at the next site.

There are about 30 of both Otago and grand skinks in this reserve and the fence will keep out cats, ferrets, weasels, rats and hedgehogs and browsers that destroy skink habitat: possums, hares and rabbits.

Cats are a serious enemy of skink, Reardon says. One cat alone was found with 49 in its stomach.

"That represents just a few hours' foraging."

These two species are found only in Otago but DoC estimates they have lost all but 8 per cent of their former range. This key Macraes Flat area has about 1500 grand and 1000 Otago skinks.

The reptiles were virtually rediscovered in 1984 through fauna surveys by DoC's predecessor, the Wildlife Service. But it wasn't until the mid-1990s that a recovery plan was launched. They are listed as "highly critical", in danger of extinction.

New Zealand has more than 80 species of skink and geckos but these larger reptiles, up to 30mm long, are "stunners" Reardon says. The grand is black with yellow flecks and the Otago black with grey, green or yellowish blotches.

IN a former life, Reardon was a wildlife cameraman, nominated this year for an Emmy award for his work on a documentary on bugs screened on the the US's Discovery Channel.

The Emmy went to someone else and he has no regrets about leaving the work to return to poorly-paid ecology.

It was a childhood fascination with dinosaurs - something most kids grow out of, he says - that led to his fascination with reptiles. His University of Wales doctorate was on a rare lizard in the West Indies.

He came here after seeing a television programme about our wildlife and "green spaces", got a job at the state-owned science institute Landcare Research but switched to the Department of Conservation last year to manage this project.

It is a "management experiment", he says, which by no means guarantees the reptiles' long-term survival.

"If this doesn't work we'll have no option but to move to in-situ captive management," Reardon says, "and that's a zoo, it's zoo-keeping."

New Zealand is "just such a fresh ecological system" compared with other parts of the world, he says, a fact he believes most people are intensely proud of. But they don't realise how much has been lost.

Once upon a time, weta "could have been just swept off trees into buckets", he says.

He has an outsider's critical eye for what's happening in conservation in New Zealand: too much time and money is being spent on saving individual species when the future lies in an "eco-systems" approach.

"The stage we're at is still fire-fighting to prevent extinctions," he says. "New Zealand has changed, we will never get it back but we have an idea of where we need it to recover to. But it's easier and a more definite outcome to do species management rather than get a whole site back, one is tangible, the other far less so, but far more important."

What that means for skink in particular, and Otago in general, is the problem of habitat loss due mostly to agriculture. Reardon says he is "not anti-farming" but there is no point in denying its impact on biodiversity. There has to be a happy medium between farmland and saving wild New Zealand and could include farmers being willing to let marginal farmland revert to bush or forest.

"We know the environment has radically changed in the last 150 years but what's really changed is top-dressing, grass and tussock-burning," he says.

"We could create an environment for these reptiles to flourish but we have to have political interest in ecological restoration on a meaningful scale."

He is aware of the uphill battle for sponsorship or even public money for the least-known rare animals, birds and reptiles but it could be worse: "If you think skink have got a public relations problem, try conserving a native snail," he says.

Like so much of our wildlife, skink are slow to mature, slow to breed and fussy about where they live. Small, isolated populations have become ever-smaller and more isolated. They live for five to 10 years, produce two to three offspring a year (skinks don't lay eggs but give birth to their young) and don't sexually mature until they're about four years old.

Reardon is sympathetic: "You get four years of precarious survival before you even get the chance to get your leg over."

Population modelling has shown they could be headed for extinction within 10 to 20 years but figuring out exactly what is causing that decline is complex. What the modelling does show is that even if the animals had an impossibly-high 40 offspring each year, their numbers are still headed downwards.

That's because their survival rate is between .41 and .68 which translates to between a 41 per cent and 68 per cent chance of survival. To future-proof them against extinction, that has to climb to over .9 or more than 90 per cent.

From that initial first stop, we have travelled a few kilometres to a series of small, fenced-off areas, tussock and rocks ringed with electric fencing and chicken wire. Built five years ago to protect small, isolated populations of skinks, they seem miserably small and the experiment has not been a success.

But at last, having lost count of the number of times Reardon has leapt out of the truck and begun poking and peering among the rocks, he nabs his skink.

The animal is in his hands for the briefest moment before darting quickly away.

It is the duty of this generation to protect what is left of our wild places and animals. It is an obligation internationally, he says, and to future generations.

"We're at a point in time when we can still do that. If we wait another 15 to 20 years, we will have missed the boat."

He came here to learn, he says, and, like all DoC staff, to make a difference.

"We all want to make a difference, we're all bloody crusaders."

You get the feeling Reardon is a man who usually gets what he wants. If they could, the skinks might be grateful they've got him on their side.