Round Island Skink

A Round Island Skink in the Reptile House

Thank you!
Did they breed the species their successfully? the specimen seems to be a little older already.

Jersey has been breeding this species since the 70's and have produced so many they have reintroduced them back onto Round Island.

PeGe said:

Thank you!
Did they breed the species their successfully? the specimen seems to be a little older already.

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Yes, their are currently 12 on show and i am sure their are many in the breeding centre and many have been released back into the wild

There are 9 on show and no captive bred Telfair's have ever been returned to Round Island, the recovery of the population there was down to habitat restoration and clearance of invasive species

Really? I thought they had put some back to help boost the population.

What about the Guenther's? Same story?

the Telfair's skinks and Guenther's gecko have also -- including last year in substantial numbers -- been reintroduced to Ile aux Aigrettes (from Round Island not from captive-bred animals), which is excellent news:
Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust ? Official Blog: Telfair?s skinks and Guenther?s geckos released on Ile aux Aigrettes
I like this part of the article

When we first released Telfair’s skinks on Ile aux Aigrettes in 2006/07 it caused substantial declines in the certain populations of invasive species, such as the introduced musk shrew. However, we suspect that shrews, which cannot be eradicated from the island using the techniques that we have used to remove the rats, are eating the eggs of the skinks and preventing the skink population from growing. The release of additional skinks onto Ile aux Aigrettes has raised the population above 600 individuals. We predict that this number of skinks will cause a severe decline and possibly the eradication of the shrew from the island and allow the skink’s eggs to survive and the population to grow.

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I like the sound of that too. Did they say how the skinks were contributing to a reduction in the shrews?

I'm assuming they are eating them. I wish more endangered species would learn to eat the invasive pest species

It's one of my favourite examples, nature knows how to rebalance itself and sometimes, just sometimes, it can manage it with a smidgeon of help!

The Telfairs and Indian Musk Shrews reached a bit of a stalemate, once this happened and numbers had been monitored for a while, the guys out there were able to calculate exactly how many telfairs they should have translocated to an island that size with the population density of shrews that it had! A potential model for many of the other offshore islets of Mauritius.

The adult skinks predate the shrews at all ages, telfairs can be ridiculously voracious and persistent! The shrews were affecting the telfairs recruitment by sniffing out and eating their eggs rather than affecting the adult population.