The endangered Mountain Skink Liopholis montana needs your help to ensure its future. Wombat Forestcare, a community conservation group with over 200 members based in the Wombat State Forest, Victoria, is seeking donations to contract a reptile scientist to undertake surveys, establish long-term monitoring sites and collect genetic samples.
See https://chuffed.org/project/113833-be-a-champion-for-nature-lets-protect-our-mountain-skink
Up until four years ago, the Mountain Skink was thought to only inhabit high altitude alpine areas from the ACT to Yea in Victoria and only at a limited number of locations. In 2020 a group of herpetologists discovered a family of Mountain Skinks in the Wombat Forest, and at a much lower altitude.
This very exciting discovery led to scientists and Wombat Forestcare locating other populations of this secretive skink.
Research partly funded by Wombat Forestcare demonstrated that the newly discovered Wombat Forest population of Mountain Skinks contained higher levels of genetic diversity and lower levels of inbreeding when compared to the other populations of Mountain Skinks.
Climate change will threaten the capacity of many alpine creatures to survive, and the Wombat Forest population will be of critical conservation importance should a captive breeding program be undertaken.
Mountain Skinks are also under threat from fuel reduction burns that are regularly undertaken in the Wombat Forest as well as salvage logging and firewood collection.
In order to protect Mountain Skinks from these activities we need to know where they are located in the Wombat Forest.
Click on image for info/order page
Click on image for info/order page
Click on image for info/order page
