Category Archives: Lizards
Australia celebrates Steve Irwin’s life
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Posted in Amphibians, Conservation, Foreign News, Herp Attacks, Laws, Lizards, Reptiles, Snakes, Turtles, U.S. News, Uncategorized
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Posted in Amphibians, Conservation, Foreign News, Herp Attacks, Laws, Lizards, Reptiles, Snakes, Turtles, U.S. News, Uncategorized
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The Crocodile Hunter’s life will be remembered today in Australia four years after his death.
Australia Zoo on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast will celebrate the life and legacy of Steve Irwin who died after he was stabbed in the heart by a stingray barb while filming one of his famous nature documentaries off far north Queensland’s coast on September 4, 2006.
His widow Terri and family decided the year Irwin died to make the anniversary of the 44-year-old’s death a private day and established November 15 as Steve Irwin Day for the public.
The zoo’s gates open extra early at 8am local time with an official opening of Steve Irwin Day at the Crocoseum at 10.30am local time.
The day will include performances from Australian pop singer Shannon Noll and presentations from Terri, daughter Bindi and son Robert.
Australia Zoo was founded by Steve Irwin’s parents in 1970 at Beerwah, north of Brisbane and has grown to become one of Queensland’s major tourism attractions.
Native species will be topic of presentation
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Posted in Amphibians, Conservation, Lizards, Reptiles, Snakes, Turtles, U.S. News
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Posted in Amphibians, Conservation, Lizards, Reptiles, Snakes, Turtles, U.S. News
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Join North Branch Land Trust Naturalist Rick Koval as he vividly illustrates in his PowerPoint program all 48 native species of reptiles and amphibians found in our region.
Afterwards, get up close and personal with live salamanders, frogs and snakes.
The program will be held from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 17 at the North Branch Land Trust office, 11 Carverton Rd, Trucksville.
This program is free to NBLT members, $5 for non-members and free for children under 12 years of age.
For more information, call 696-5545
Santa Rosa Plateau Foundation holds Family Wildlife Day
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As his mother, Stephanie Schuitt, looked on, 7-year-old Jeremy Schuitt stood inside the visitor center Saturday at the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve holding and petting a small snake.
“I’m good at holding snakes,” Jeremy said as he looked around.
Jeremy, his mother and his 4-year-old sister, Faith, were among the dozens of adults and children to attend Family Wildlife Day at the reserve.
It is the third year the Santa Rosa Plateau Foundation and Riverside County Regional Park & Open Space District have sponsored the event.
The idea behind holding a family day is to get parents to bring their children to a day outdoors while also giving the youngsters a chance to see various animals, both live and mounted for display. The event also shows visitors what is available at the plateau.
“I’ll give the kids a chance to see the wildlife up close and personal,” said Nancy Backstrand, chairman of the event.
Backstrand said the event has grown since the first year, when only a few people showed up. Last year, she said, about 200 people attended.
This year, the parking lot at the visitor center was packed; cars, SUVs and trucks were parked along Clinton Keith Road near the entrance.
Throughout the event, someone in a Smokey Bear costume wandered through the crowd, greeting children and parents and occasionally posing for photos.
Along with the snake inside the visitor center, there was a turtle, opossum, savanna monitor lizard, bearded dragon lizard and a raccoon, along with displays of bats and the a mountain lion that had been mounted.
“We got to pet the bearded dragon,” said 6-year-old Brynna Green, who was at the event with her father, Kellen, her mother, Shelley, and 4-year-old sister, Kacey.
Outside, children could make plaster casts of paw prints, look at display rocks, listen to a storyteller and live folk music or visit with the owners of several hawks and other birds of prey.
Chris Allen of De Luz brought his hawk to educate the public about hawks and how they should be protected from harm.
“Hawks are really cool birds,” Allen said.
San Diego museum plans lizards, snakes day
SAN DIEGO —- Lizards and snakes get a bad rap. But an exhibit under way at the San Diego Natural History Museum hopes to warm up the public to the cold-blooded creatures.
“Lizards & Snakes: Alive!” opened at the museum last month and features more than 60 live reptiles, along with a vast array of hands-on and educational exhibits that explain why the sometimes frightful-looking creatures are an important part of the natural ecosystem.
“Lizards and snakes make up an amazing success story in the animal kingdom,” said Bradford D. Hollingsworth, a herpetology curator at the museum and collaborator on the exhibit, which was first developed by the American Museum of Natural History in New York. “(The exhibit) is a great start to understanding the rich biodiversity of lizards and snakes in our own backyard, as San Diego is home to 14 of their taxonomic families.”
To add interactivity to the exhibit, the museum will host a “Lizards & Snakes Alive! Family Day” from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The program will be free with paid museum admission.
Children will be able to take part in several crafts and activities at stations around the museum, including having their faces painted with lizard and snake designs. At noon Saturday, “Mr. James the Reptile Wrangler” will present a “Tales & Scales” program where children can learn about, see and touch some scaly critters. There will also be some “meet and greet” sessions with other creatures at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m.
The exhibit’s live collection includes a rhinoceros iguana, chuckwallas, Madagascan giant day geckos, Amazonian tree boas, Western fence lizards, gila monsters and red spitting cobras. Some of the creatures are displayed in re-created habitats, like the 4-inch tropical girdled lizard and the 14-foot Burmese python. There’s also a variety of fossil specimens and fossil casts, including a fossil of a megalania, the largest-known terrestrial squamate (scaled creatures), which grew up to 30 feet. And there’s a cladogram (from the Greek word for “branch”) where children can trace the evolutionary relationships of squamates over time and to each other.
“Lizards & Snakes: Alive” continues through April 3. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily (open until 8 p.m. Thursdays, except holidays). The museum is in San Diego’s Balboa Park at Village Place and Park Boulevard. Tickets are $16 for general admission, $14 for seniors; $11 for active-duty military with ID and youths 13-17; and $10 for children 3 to 12 and free for children 2 and under. Call 619-232-3821 or visit sdnhm.org.
Crocodile rescue may take 2-3 days more
HYDERABAD: Just as humans fear wild animals, they too would like to remain away from humans.This seems to have been proved by the crocodile that has made a mysterious appearance in a rain-water pond in Nanakramguda a few days ago.The reptile has not come out even once for sunbathing ever since it was spotted by a group of locals in the pond. Hundreds of curious denizens thronged the area on the first two days after the news broke out to have a glimpse of the crocodile probably terrifying it out of its wits.Chief wildlife warden and principal chief conservator of Forest, Hitesh Malhotra said, “The reptile has been very shy due to the presence of so many people on the first two days. Under normal circumstances it would have come out of water for sunbathing in the first couple of days and we could have rescued it while on land. However, it looks like we have to take steps to rescue it from water and leave it in Manjira Wildlife Sanctuary.” Meanwhile, pumps are at work draining out water from the pond and the process is estimated to take another three days. Till Saturday evening only 10-12 feet of water could be pumped out of the pond.“It may take two to three days to pump out the entire water as the owner of the pond as well as locals are not aware of the exact depth of the pond. A team from the Manjira Wildlife Sanctuary has been montoring the behaviour of the reptile which has been surfacing for breathing regularly for the last four days,” said divisional forest officer Kudrat Moinuddin.The crocodile has once again brought to the fore the issue of human civilisation eating into the natural habitat of the wildlife.
Gator Hunting Growing in Georgia
LAKE SEMINOLE, GA — Alligator hunting is one of the fastest growing game sports in the country. Thousands of people from all 50 states applied for Gerogia’s lottery to decide which 850 hunters granted licenses to harvest one alligator this year.
Chase Lazmbree of Newton applied five times before winning the alligator hunting lottery, and being picked to receive a license. “I hunt everything. Deer, turkeys, hogs. Just never alligator,” Lazmbree said.
The state record gator is 13 feet 9 inches long, 692 pounds, taken by Randy Hand of Decatur County.
To hunt gator, you need someone with a specially equipped boat and experience. Grebel is going on the Flint River with David Law. Law admits he would gator hunt every night if he could. “I guess it’s the adrenaline rush of hunting something that could eat you,” he said.
Chase is working with John Wagnon, who will take him out on Lake Seminole. Hunters can use anything from a harpoon to a cross bow, but both Chase and Grebel have chosen to use their compound bow.
“Don’t shoot him in the head,” Law said. “It’s hard. Hit right behind his head, there is some soft tissue there. That’s the big part of his body too.”
His arrow has a rotating head that will anchor a float line in the gator, so that he can be tracked and dragged beside the boat, then shot.
Wagnon has equipped his flat bottom boat with the gear needed to hunt gator, to host hunters. “I still get to go,” he said. “I’ve got the gear. Get to experience the thrill of getting a big reptile on the end of a line and bringing him in.”
“Some are dinosaurs, some are healthy, but they all are dangerous,” Wagnon said.
Law’s strategy on the river is to spot the gators eyes, then drive up close and use a trolling motor to move in for the shot.
On Lake Seminole, Wagnon runs close to shore to surprise the gators. The water on the Flint River is very shallow, and Grebel does not see any gators big enough to satisfy him. Remember he gets to harvest only one.
At Lake Seminole, Chase gets close to a number of gators, but also doesn’t think they are big enough, and passes them up. “I got a good view of his head. He’d be about 9 feet,” Chase said.
For hours, they ride Lake Seminole in the darkness, looking for the huge prize.
Chase gets another good look, but again decides not to shoot. “Got close to a couple, but they just weren’t big enough. So we let them go.”
Grebel calls it a night without taking a shot. “It was different,” he said. “I’ve never been on the river at night.”
Chase also calls it a night. Both will be back. “That’s why they call it hunting.”
Grebel returned to the Flint River two weeks later and took an eight-foot gator. He mounted the head and skin for a trophy.
Chase hunted again the next night, but never got his gator. Both hunters say they will put their names back in the lottery again next year, hoping to land one of the biggest animals in Georgia.
Georgia increased the quota from 700 to 850 gators this year, because of the increased number of the reptiles.
Georgia officials expect many more people from across the United States to enter the lottery to try and win a license next year.