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.

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?

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

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.