Saving Sleepy Lizards

[cagey]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11...on-to-save-australian-sleepy-lizards/10561726

Student on a mission to save sleepy lizards across Australia
ABC North and West
By Shannon Corvo
Posted about 6 hours agoFri 30 Nov 2018, 6:47am

Photo: Jake hopes his signs will stop drivers running over the lizards. (ABC North and West: Shannon Corvo)
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Jake Morrison Croker loves playing the drums, riding on his skateboard and saving sleepy lizards.

The six-year-old has designed his own animal road signs, replacing the common kangaroo and koala with a shingleback lizard.

"I'm making signs for them because I see a large number of sleepy lizards getting run over every day," Jake said.

"It makes me feel sad."

He hoped the signs would be erected all around Australia to warn drivers to watch out for sleepy lizards.

A family affair
Jake and his family live at Cross Roads, at the northern end of South Australia's Yorke Peninsula.

They try to save lizards from oncoming traffic when it is safe to do so.

"We saved five and we let them go in heaps of places to live in bushes and in other people's sheds away from roads," Jake said.

Photo: Jake's mother Alison, sister Scarlet, father Wes, and dog Oscar are all lizard lovers. (ABC North and West: Shannon Corvo)


Jake came up with the idea himself and got his family to help him draw the picture of the shingleback.

"I took a photo of it to school and then I photocopied it … and then I gave it to every class," he said.

Jake's school joins him on his quest
Now, the whole Wallaroo Mines Primary School is involved with making the signs.

School principal Adele Keleher said you do not usually find this kind of initiative in kids Jake's age.

"That will also inspire other kids involved to think 'well, if a reception [early primary school] student has got enough get up and go to do this, what change can I make?'" Ms Keleher said

Photo: Not all six-year-olds are as passionate as Jake Croker. (ABC North and West: Shannon Corvo)


"We thought, 'well let's make it into a little bit of a competition and get the whole school on board to put up signs around the copper coast'.

"The competition hasn't finished, but what we were thinking is, once the winner is announced, we would copy it and laminate it and ask each child in the school to put it somewhere.

"Obviously we need to be aware of litter and things blowing away, so there are a few things to consider and obviously we would have to have some consultation with the council."

Council shows support
Copper Coast Council Mayor, Roslyn Talbot, said it is fantastic to see someone so young care so much about the reptiles, but there are processes that must be followed before the signs are put up.

"He would have to put in an application to council and it would be up to the elected members to decide if they wanted to proceed with this or allow him to depending on where they want them to go," Ms Talbot said.

"If they're Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure roads, there's legislation that would have to be complied with."

Jake will continue to save sleepy lizards and lobby for road signs

 

[longirostris]

Isn't it ridiculous that we have wildlife regulators and environmental agencies in every state of Australia running around trying to catch poachers and concentrating on vilifying native animal keepers everywhere for the handful of people involved in taking native animals and reptiles in particular from the wild illegally when at the same time we see a kid that's 6 years old who seems to have more brains than all the wildlife officers and regulators combined and actually gets what one of the real problems are for wildlife in this country and is actually doing something about it, not like the morons who haven't got the political guts to face up to what the real existential issues for wildlife in Australia actually are.

Why do we not have a marketing campaign for wildlife crossing roads, like the "life be in it" campaign or the "Don't rubbish Australia" or the "slip slop slap" sun smart campaign that changes the way people behave. That makes people think about what they are doing when they start to steer their car, truck, SUV or whatever at the lizard, snake, turtle, frog or other wildlife that happens to be on the road and make them rethink what they are doing and get them to change their behaviour and hostility towards our native animals, particularly reptiles that are crossing the roads.

I'll state here and now that for all the effort and resources that are being poured into licensing, monitoring, compliance and in particular policing, ie wildlife officers actually running around trying to catch a handful of people who do the wrong thing, we would get a fabulous marketing and advertising campaign that could run long enough to save millions of DOR reptiles just by making people think again about the animals they are about to consciously run over.

Good on Jake Croker and his family for highlighting and getting publicity for a problem that will not go away without a concerted effort to address it. Let's hope Jake's efforts are the start of something that gathers real momentum.

Mark Hawker

 

[GBWhite]

Saw these on the outskirts of Perth when I was there in 2012. Should be more like them right across the country.

 

[Yellowtail]

I grew up in WA in the 1950s and bobtails were so prolific in the northern suburbs of Perth you could see 100 in a days bush walk, every garden had a few but then so were koalas in the eastern states till humans shot 40 million of them for their skins.

 

[Flaviemys purvisi]

I grew up in WA in the 1950s and bobtails were so prolific in the northern suburbs of Perth you could see 100 in a days bush walk, every garden had a few but then so were koalas in the eastern states till humans shot 40 million of them for their skins.

Go to kangaroo island... they introduced 18 koalas in 1920 as an insurance population and now there's 50,000 of them. They introduced a sterilisation scheme in 1996 to try and halt their reproduction and it has been unsuccessful. They're now calling for a koala cull. But, they're like possums... still plenty around the country, nowhere in Australia are they classified as endangered. People just get all up in arms over koalas because they're cute, fluffy and cuddly... meanwhile many reptiles ARE on the brink and people will intentionally run them over.

I spend a lot of time in Noosa and the Sunny coast hinterland.. all you have to do is look up and you'll see koalas.

 

[longirostris]

Saw these on the outskirts of Perth when I was there in 2012. Should be more like of them right across the country.

View attachment 325694

[doublepost=1543566602,1543565640][/doublepost]That's it. It doesn't take much. Just let people know that it is not clever to run over wildlife and sooner or later people will start to change their behaviour. Back up the road signs with a clever television marketing campaign like the one they used for "Don't rubbish Australia" (that showed a pigshead as the driver who had just thrown rubbish out the window of his car turns his head and looks directly at the camera) and people will modify their negative attitudes towards our wildlife even quicker. Why our wildlife and environmental authorities don't do this is beyond me.

Just as a matter of interest George I was over in the west last year and the amount of road kill particularly sleepy lizards was insane. What was worse was where they were being run over. There were dead sleepy lizards all over the quiet residential streets in amongst the dunes at Pevelly beach and all the other back beaches around Margaret River. Clearly people were deliberately running them over. They were crossing roads even whilst I was driving around the area. The difference is that I actually stopped and let them cross the road in peace. There is no traffic. You could stop and let a hundred of them cross the road and there would not be another car come by. So why do people feel the need to willfully kill them. They just need educating or humiliating either of the two will do. As I say a clever advertising campaign would be a really good start along with the signs etc.

Mark Hawker

 

[Yellowtail]

Go to kangaroo island... they introduced 18 koalas in 1920 as an insurance population and now there's 50,000 of them. They introduced a sterilisation scheme in 1996 to try and halt their reproduction and it has been unsuccessful. They're now calling for a koala cull. But, they're like possums... still plenty around the country, nowhere in Australia are they classified as endangered. People just get all up in arms over koalas because they're cute, fluffy and cuddly... meanwhile many reptiles ARE on the brink and people will intentionally run them over.

I spend a lot of time in Noosa and the Sunny coast hinterland.. all you have to do is look up and you'll see koalas.

Mate I've got them in my backyard but it is hard to imagine how abundant they must have been before they started shooting them, kangaroo island is an example of the kind of numbers that once existed on the mainland.

 

[Flaviemys purvisi]

Mate I've got them in my backyard but it is hard to imagine how abundant they must have been before they started shooting them, kangaroo island is an example of the kind of numbers that once existed on the mainland.

All well and good but mainland Australia couldn't support 40+ million koalas now... there isn't enough Eucalyptus trees left thanks to urban sprawl. That's the big problem with specialist animals. If koalas lived off grass, well they'd rise again on mainland Australia but those days are gone and whilst not in plague proportions now, you don't have to work hard to spot one. I think they're doing OK in the pockets where they still exist.
[doublepost=1543607971,1543571408][/doublepost]

Saw these on the outskirts of Perth when I was there in 2012. Should be more like them right across the country.

View attachment 325694

The best sign I saw on my last trip to WA to check out the status of the South-Western Snake-necked turtle was this one in Albany near Lake Seppings on Golf Links Road.


Gravid females exit Lake Seppings and cross the Golf Links road to nest on the edges of the Golf greens from October to November and the 50c piece sized hatchies emerge and attempt to cross the same road (in the opposite direction) towards Lake Seppings the following August-October.


The local indigenous Australians are the Noongar people whose name for the lake is "Tjuirtgellong" which means "The place of the long-necked tortoise"