St-Croix Ground Lizard - Animal of February 2016

20th (already?... wow!) page of my Explorer's Notebook for the Animal of the Month Event at


This time it's a truly gorgeous lizard, with a beautiful blue tail and many stripes... It has one of the smallest range I've ever seen, since St-Croix is quite small (about 45 km long and 20km wide) and it's present on an island and a beach area!!
It's critically endangered, but there is good hope for this species: one of the main threats for it was an Indian Mongoose that had been wrongly introduced on the island in 1884. Since the "imported" mongoose was destroying the ecological balance, people decided to get rid of it and, if you add this to the creation of a National Wildlife Refuge and the re-introduction of small communities of lizards on a few of the nearest island (with encouraging results), we might be able to save these fellas

And, to my friends who are biologists, I must say that this lizard hasn't been really studied yet... we don't know much about its behavior and life... maybe an interesting object of study!! *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*

made with:
Faber Castell Black Markers
Various colored pencils

Last "Animals of the Month":