Many people who travel to Europe are used to seeing lizards in southern cities but Dan had a shock when he sent a film clip in to Froglife of what he thought was a common lizard in Central London to be told that it was almost certainly a ‘non-native’ wall lizard. Dan was “amazed to see it, I couldn’t believe it. Earlier on that week when I walked past they were cleaning the building and later on in the week I saw the lizard.”
Conservation and Science Manager, Dr Andrew Smart commented, “It’s so great that Dan sent this in; the value of Citizen Science in establishing the location of lizard populations and recording when they first come out and bask is really valuable. In this case it looks like the animal is a wall lizard, normally found in the wild in Europe which will be an animal that has been released from captivity or that is the descendant of a released animal. Froglife confirmed a new population a couple of years ago following records sent in by a citizen scientist on our Dragon Finder App.
Froglife will arrange for someone to visit the site and try to determine if this is a single animal or part of a larger population. There are a lot of non-native reptiles and amphibians in the UK and it’s so helpful for Citizen Scientists to let us know when they come across them. Animals such as the wall lizard, midwife toad, alpine newt and various terrapins and freshwater turtles can be reported on our Dragon Finder App along with those important records of UK native reptile and amphibian species”
Thanks to Dan taking the time to send in his reptile record. We can get a better idea of where non-native species are appearing and help gather information on potential competitors or sources of disease that could impact our already hard-pressed UK reptile and amphibian species. It is illegal to release non-native animals into the wild and their random release can have an impact on our native species.
Remember to record any reptiles or amphibians you see out and about on the Dragon Finder App. All records from the app are sent to the National Biodiversity Network Atlas.
