Happy Earth Day from the San Joaquin Desert of Carrizo Plain National Monument. Those dirt areas are precincts of Giant Kangaroo Rat, a federally and state listed species. They help clear areas of the invasive annual grasses that dominate the landscape. Most of their habitat is now agriculture. 🌎

We are hoping to implement a prescribed grazing experiment to test if directed sheep grazing can improve lizard habitat this year. Even if this does not happen, giant kangaroo rat has recolonized our release site; this endangered species helps mow down the grass to keep their precincts clear!

One of the major issues for remaining populations of this species is the high coverage of invasive annual grasses that dominate many San Joaquin Desert remnants. Most persisting populations of BNLL live on grazed landscapes that help reduce the grass cover so the lizards can thrive.

We monitor post-released lizard with an automated ultra-high frequency (UHF) telemetry array, as well as with temperature sensitive very-high frequency (VHF) telemetry.

We work with a population that was facing extirpation on public (BLM) land in 2020. Our breeding colony has been successful, and we have released 37 lizards back to the site over the past two years.

These lizards are endemic to the San Joaquin Desert, an ecosystem almost completely converted into irrigated agriculture, resulting in the fragmentation and loss of leopard lizard populations as well as many other threatened species (kit fox, giant kangaroo rat, burrowing owl).

Hi Bluesky, figured I should give a an intro post! I am a postdoctoral scientist in the Conservation Science Department at Fresno Chaffee Zoo. I work on a breeding and repatriation project for the blunt-nosed leopard lizard (BNLL), a species that has been endangered since the inception of the ESA