Create a lizard-friendly habitat
In this activity, students have the opportunity to create a lizard-friendly habitat in the school grounds. The extension activity involves designing a suitable environment for keeping lizards in captivity.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
describe the basic survival needs of lizards
identify key components of a lizard-friendly habitat
understand threats to lizards in Aotearoa New Zealand and some of the possible solutions.
Fat skink, thin skink
Dr Kelly Hare talks about her research into the captive management of lizards.
Select here to view video transcript, jargon alert and copyright information.
Download the Word file (see link below) for:
introduction/background notes
instructions on what you need and what to do
discussion questions
ideas for extending your students.
Related content
Skinks and geckos are the only 2 native families of lizard found in New Zealand. Although they share a number of common characteristics, there are some significant differences between them.
Introduced mammals, as well as disease and loss of habitat, threaten the survival of our remaining reptiles and amphibians. Explore this further in Threats to native reptiles and amphibians.
Discover some of the conservation management tools used to help save our native reptiles and amphibians in New Zealand, including captive management and translocation.
Consider also using some of the Ethics in conservation science activity. This encourages students to consider the conservation of native frogs from a number of different perspectives but can be adapted for lizards.
Useful links
Visit the Department of Conservation website to find out more about attracting lizards to your garden. It includes downloadable factsheets about gardening for lizards in the lower North Island and Canterbury.
On the Predator Free NZ Trust Make your garden safe for wildlife page, you can download an info-graphic on Creating a lizard friendly garden (PDF, 1.7 MB).
Visit the New Zealand Herpetological Society website to find out more about keeping lizards in captivity.
