Thursday, 3 January 2013

Projects ion of wind farms helps finds endangered lizards

www.abc.net.au
28 Dec 2012

The South Australian Museum says the introduction of wind farms has led to greater discoveries of the pygmy bluetongue lizard in the State's mid-north. For 20 years the Museum has led a research project into the endangered species in the Burra region.

A community group has been formed to help continue the research which has now identified about 27 populations of the rare lizard. Senior herpetology researcher at the Museum, Doctor Mark Hutchinson, says greater environmental scrutiny for wind farm developments has had an unexpected side-effect.

"In the periphery of it where people are looking to put in tracks or other things, down the bottoms of hills and on the edges of where the windfarms are going, the lizards have turned up. "So about four or five of the latest populations have turned up as a side-benefit of having to pay for environmental attention to particular areas in the landscape".

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