do you see them almost everywhere on trees plants in your yard and yes sometimes even in your homes they are the caribbean and nola's more commonly known as lizards and are very common on saint roy but today we're going to take a look at another type of lizard and believe it or not it's actually an endangered species it's the St. Croix ground lizard and it's found at three specific locations in addition we're going to take a look at some slithery serpents not to worry these little guys won't bite or poison you so drop what you're doing and join me as we rediscover some of our island's endangered reptiles and dig up others that are not so common hi i'm Jenisha good morning i'm with dr coles i'm from fish and wildlife we're going to go out and take a look at some ground lizards over here on St. Croix Hotel on the Cay okay would you like to come with us sure but how are we getting over there we're going to go by kayak oh wow so we're going to teach you how to kayak at the same time okay this is my first time so i'm really looking forward to this okay you'll have a lot of fun so so Bill tell us a little bit about what we're going to see today well we're going to take a look at the St. Croix ground lizard today and it's one of the most endangered lizards in the world in fact is only found here on St. Croix and protestant key green key and ruth key so there are no zoos that have this lizard it's a really remarkable lizard that belongs to us here on saint croix so tell us how how did they become endangered species well the St. Croix ground lizard used to be found all over saint croix okay and what happened is when the mongoose was introduced to get rid of the rats that were in the cane fields they would eat anything that's on ground the Saint Croix ground lizard is called a ground lizard because it doesn't climb trees okay so it's living with the mongoose all the time and the mongoose would go around and eat all this the ground lizards that's why they're endangered why don't the ground leaders climb trees they're afraid of heights seriously no the ground lizards don't climb trees partly because they're they're used to a digging habitat they're set up their feet and everything are designed for digging for brewing whereas the um analysts the green lizards that you see climbing up trees they're not they don't do a lot of digging they do mostly scampering around on the trees so they have claws that will stick into the tree trunk so they can climb up and down trees and the saint croix ground laser doesn't is not built the same way okay is the ground is the only name we go by before that lizard is there another name well there's a scientific name which is a maiva polyps and so we have actually another amiva on saint croix right now amiva exul which is introduced it's a lot larger in size and it will actually it's aggressive enough it will eat our Saint Croix ground lizards we need to be really careful that we keep this the population separate these are the only three locations in the world the Saint Croix ground lizard is so if we can keep the exul this Puerto Rican ground lizard away from these islands we should be all right can you tell us what the population of ground lasers are today we can estimate the population for a number of different reasons we can't give exact numbers but we're talking about between four and six hundred lizards total in the world which makes it a very endangered species the numbers on protestant key have been increasing over the last seven years so that's great and it's a lot of help between the hotel staff the students and dp and ours now you can see behind us here that this area has used to be overgrown in high school students from Saint Croix central high actually cleaned up the entire area and removed a tremendous amount of debris and helped to manipulate the environment here to make it better for the Saint Croix ground lizard the the students that helped out here on protestant key were one big major factor and then teaching the hotel staff if you look at the some of the grounds here it's not raked completely clean there's a lot of leaf litter and stuff and that's what the ground lizard is eating stuff from it doesn't eat the leaf litter okay but it eats the insects that are feeding on the leaf litter now i've seen a very small ground lizard eat or try and eat a very large cockroach so there's something that we definitely want to have around because they are eating a lot of the insects and stuff that we don't want to have well let's go take a look at some lizards now and see if we can find some great let's go if you simply walk around protestant key you should be able to see the ground lizards that's of course if you know what you're looking for i haven't seen any here today so far but again it is a little bit cooler so we will i saw a couple across here so if we go across here we should be able to see a couple lizards when we get to the other side you definitely have to keep your eyes to the floor and your ears open okay listen because you'll hear them scary first you'll hear a little bit of shake of the leaf litter and then you'll spot the lizard so far i'm looking and listening and still no ground lizard now the lizards like areas where there's a combination of mottled sunlight and this area used to have so much vegetation on it no light got to the bottom so there were no lizards here now we've got light that's being filtered through the canopy and down of course a little hard to see when we've got clouds and you feel the temperature drop just a little bit that's enough to hide the lizards and trust me they hide very well wait a minute there's something rustling in the leaf litter is it yep there it is the synchro ground lizard what he's doing now is looking for something to eat um so you know he's digging through the leaf litter looking for for a you know insects or whatever and then he'll um eat those now these ground lizards are hard to spot for one they blend in well with their surroundings they also scurry away quickly and at first glance you may take it for an ordinary enolis common island lizard that is but look closely and you'll definitely see the difference does anything about the lizard stand out take a good look yep you see it the sencori ground lizard has a beautiful tail did you see the purple and the or the blue in the tail and that's what makes them such a unique lizard for me i just love that turquoise color if you're wondering how an animal that looks this lazy moves so quickly well let's just say these lizards are energized by the sun these lizards only come out in the heat of the day okay so if you want to see them typically we tell people come out between 11 and 2, 11 and 3 o'clock in the afternoon they do like that heat of the day and if they were up somewhere colder like florida they wouldn't be able to survive the winter so it looks like he's he's torn a piece off of a beetle or something and that's what he's eating as you can see i'm kind of chewing on it right now now you see the little spot right down this you can see the eye and then just down below behind the eye there's another spot that's where his ear is okay um it's a tympanum it's called we'll let this hungry lizard finish its meal so we saw some ground lizards along the way tell me how do you guys survey the amount of lizards that you guys see here on helsinki what we do is we divide the island up into different areas for example the area that we're on right now was kind of grassy so we just call this a grassy area if you look down over the edge we've got a different different area so that would be sampled differently so we say okay here's one grassy area it's all the habitats the same so we go and we count the lizards in this area and then we go to the different area and count the lizards there and go to a different area and count the lizards there then we just add them up so do you guys plan to you know expand the amount of locations where you can find ground lizards yes we are now part of the problem is the making sure that there's suitable habitat for the lizards now remember mongoose ate the lizards or eat lizards they have like popcorn they really like that they're easy to catch now you saw some of the lizards they they didn't necessarily just run away from us they moved away and then they moved back because they're kind of aggressive so imagine this you're a big predator like a mongoose and along comes dinner and instead of running away it kind of stands its ground and says okay i'm going to take you on the mongoose goes tasty and eats them right away okay so that's the sort of problem that we've got with the ground lizards now buck island the national park service has just eradicated a lot of the rat all of the rats i believe in all of the mongoose so we're going to take lizards from green key and maybe from protestant key and reintroduce them to buck island and by continuing a program to make sure that the rats and language don't become re-established that'll be a fourth island that has ground lizards on it sounds like we need to check up on this project and take a trip to buck island but first a detour to green key the small landmass just north of the green key marina up now i'm sure many of you have seen green key on many occasions but i bet not too many have had the opportunity to step on it that's because this little patch of green is federally protected green key is 14 acres it's a national wildlife refuge and it was designated a refuge because of this lizard just to protect this lizard as we learned earlier green key has the highest population of St. Croix ground lizards the living conditions here are ideal for survival it is not a fun place to walk around in almost every plant out here has spines on it or trips you when you're walking around or there are rocks everywhere but it is beautiful um because of these lizards because there are a lot of birds here that nest um and it's just you know it's it's a pristine area for the most part just simply trying to walk through green key is no easy task trying to catch lizards from here to transport to buck island even harder well they're they're pretty difficult to catch actually they're quick and what we use is a noose and you have to get the noose right around their head and around their body and then pull them up before they walk through the noose and they they're quick and also when you're new seen you're in the brush and so there's a lot of branches that are pulling on the noose and usually just when you're close to the lizard a branch just pulls your noose tight you have to readjust it i started walking the island looking for lizards at about 9:20 and i got lucky and caught one at 9:30 a female and another female at 9:45 and then had a dry spell for a couple hours and i've caught two more for a total of four today which is pretty good what was your target well what we need to finish our translocation so we need nine females what we've got today are four females so we need five females left and we'll finish the translocation we'll have a really good population on buck island well in that case we better get back to work now unfortunately we didn't catch any lizards with the cameras rolling but some were caught earlier however before they can be transported to their new home they have to be checked and tagged for each lizard we take data on what size it is and if it's a male or female and how much it weighs eight point zero five tapes sixty-six sixty-six total tail length right and he has a full full tail each lizard is permanently marked with some individually individual glass beads so each lizard has a color code of glass beads that stay on its tail forever that way when we're studying the lizards on buck island we can look at them through a pair of binoculars and tell which individual it is based on the color-coded beads it's a horizontal mattress suture it's it's a nice it's a nice suture to use because it's strong but it's not real tight on the lizard and it's um it's basically in and out here over and then in and out and what's nice about a horizontal mattress suture is it it lets the beads lay flat in a line and that's the least amount of interference uh for the beads on the lizard and uh we do a triple knot on the rear and then put a little super glue on it so um it's a good way to attach it and it's same suture that's used in humans the team also removed some of the lizard's toes for marking purposes like the beating this does seem painful but toe loss for the lizards is quite a common thing you'll see a lot of these lizards have natural toe loss their toes break off in the field all the time and so we use their whatever missing toes also numbers so you're gonna cut three and nine nine and so there should be a number 30 here it's either it's the third time 30. okay it seems that toe clipping is just a pretty good way for lizards because they lose so many toes naturally anyway the other reason they take the toes off is an individual marking for these lizards so they all have their own number so if uh whatever marking techniques you use like beating doesn't work if they fall off and you can look at the toes on the lizard to identify it now that the lizards are all checked and tagged it's time to carry them to their new home the reason this project uh got underway uh it's basically insurance and it's insurance for the survival of Saint Croix ground lizards Green Key National Wildlife Refuge was established to protect one of the last large populations of ground lizards however if we would experience catastrophic storms or tidal waves or and so forth the population on green key could be at risk part of the recovery effort for Saint Croix ground lizards is to establish populations on other islands so that in the event of of any kind of disaster at least hopefully some animals could survive she's a little excited but with a little help she's off experience she's doing our lizard thing enclosures are set up on buck island to help the lizards get acclimated and survive what a lot of us don't realize is that 500 years ago most of these offshore keys were heavily forested and had habitat that was quite a bit different from what we see now so in reintroducing ground lizards to buck island we're actually taking lizards from an island that has actually been deforested and putting those lizards back into a habitat that's probably much more appropriate for the species this new habitat is uh similar to green key but as you can see the trees are fairly large and it's got a fairly open understory so uh there's lots of places for the lizards to forage and bask in the sun the canopy lets a lot of light through so the lizards can bask pretty optimally also we are bringing 60 56 lizards total uh in a ratio of four males four females to three males this is optimal for breeding as far as just getting more eggs laid at right at the beginning and it fits into our experimental design as well ground lizards like the kind of habitat that we have in buck island and so that's one of the major reasons why we're reintroducing lizards here it's a good place for them and it's a good thing to help ensure their survival we're also using this as an opportunity to study the lizards behavior and ecology and that's part of the reason we have these paired enclosures so for every enclosure with lizards we've got an adjacent enclosure without lizards and this will enable us to study the food web and how the invertebrates which the lizards feed upon are changing in density with the presence of the lizards thanks to the efforts of the national park service the U.S Fish and Wildlife the Department of Planning and Natural Resources the nature conservancy and Texas a m the lizards have a much better chance of survival let's say goodbye to the Saint Croix ground lizards and head back to the big island to dig up an even more common species that many may not know much about here maybe you've had this experience you're about to do some work in your garden you dig up some soil and right there in front of you could it be is it a snake on st croix it may not be very big but it is a snake so what are we looking at here bro this is the type flops richard eye this is a blind snake or a worm snake it's called this is about this this is the size of an adult snake and what you see looking at you is its head you can see it's so small it eats termites and other insects it's so small that the mouth of it cannot eat an adult termite so it only eats the eggs you see that little spot in there that's where the mouth is now this is the tail over here and it just pooped a little bit but the tail is has a little white you see a little white end on it and what it does is when it's afraid it lashes out with that and so it feels like a fingernail touching him and that's what it's um feels like so it's actually a snake it's the only snake that's native to the verge to Saint Croix uh where where can these be found these can be found throughout Saint Croix mainly if you're gardening you'll find them when you dig in the soil and you can see if you get the sunlight just right on it you see kind of a scale pattern on it okay it scales exactly like a snake scales an earthworm which is why it's called a worm snake would have rings that go around it so it looks like it reminds everyone of an earthworm okay but it's a very beneficial because like i said it eats termites and termite eggs remember what a termite trail looks like this guy can crawl up inside the termite trail and into the nest of the termites to eat the things it's pooping all over the place well it's just one time because that's another thing they do when they're scared is to defecate like that and that's one way that they hope they could get rid of a predator or just wait for uh convince a predator that it's not worth their while but that's what it is they're they're all they don't either absolutely harmless to us um they they have an eye spot they don't have an eye that can see like we can see so they could tell light and dark and he's trying to find a way to get back into the dark okay but that's the that's the uh the worm snake the Virgin Islands or the Virgin Islands worm snake this is so cool yeah and like i said this is as big as they get so you can imagine how is he going to bite you how is he going to hurt you i know so um now you can think about all the pests and stuff that we have on our houses and stuff if he eats their eggs in the larvae then we don't have to use pesticides which aren't good for us either so it's really important to try and keep these guys alive and keep them well in our environment how do we go about making sure we don't use pesticides you said well pesticides can can hurt them but also don't try and kill them okay okay and um if you're if you're digging in in your yard you know don't don't dig them don't break them in half they're gonna die just as if you'd taken a lizard and cut it in half it's amazing yeah see it's not slimy or anything it just feels very very wet this feels very smooth doesn't it yeah it does yeah yeah is this the only variety of snake this this is the only type of snake that's found on saint croix that's native now other people have brought pet snakes on to saint croix but this is the only native snake okay bit of his tail right there and that that's the only defense mechanism they had but since they since they live in the termite burrows and stuff they don't get preyed upon by the mongoose and stuff because they can get up and away from them so unlike the ground lizard these guys can hide in termite burrows and stuff they're they're very abundant in on sanctuary yeah i found them all the way from way out east to way out west so they're found through i think throughout the island anywhere where there's dirt and soil that they can get in again where there's insects and stuff that they can go and eat so there you have it two native reptiles to san croix you probably never saw before or simply took for granted i had a great time and i certainly learned a whole lot today if you ever get a chance to visit protestant key you should take some time to see these beautiful creatures but remember there are not too many of them around so simply look and admire also the next time you're gardening and you come across a warm snake you don't need to run away it won't harm you and always remember to cherish your home this beautiful island but most of all cherish each other we'll see you next time