- ANDY: These individuals will be really small.
- NARRATOR: This habitat and these ants
mean everything to the survival of another animal.
- KRIS: Let's go.
Are you ready?
Go find it.
- NARRATOR: The dog is here to search for it.
- ANDY: It should be a target-rich environment.
- KRIS: Hey.
Your typical detection dogs are going to be used
in law enforcement.
Obviously this is not a law enforcement context.
[whistle]
Conservation dogs have been used with other species.
But we have not seen them used for the Texas Horned Lizard.
- NARRATOR: Efforts to restore Texas horned lizards where
they were once common have involved years of research,
captive breeding programs at zoos
and so far only one lizard-sniffing dog.
- It's definitely a conversation starter.
- If we're successful in this effort,
we will find horned lizards on the landscape.
[music]
- A lot of Texans my age or older,
they have fond memories of horned lizards in abundance.
People tell me about when they were children
they would play with them in the back yards
or find them in a dirt lot in the neighborhood
and that they were just everywhere.
- JOHN: The Texas horned lizard really represents
my childhood.
As best we can tell, the Texas horned lizard disappeared
from much of its range in about the mid 70s
and that coincided with a lot of things in the landscape.
- Fire ants get a lot of blame,
and they deserve some blame,
but they are not the only factor.
- At the time a lot of people were waging war
on the harvester ants, the big red ants mounds.
And also at the time,
coastal Bermuda was being planted in pastures.
And these lizards need harvester ants.
They need native bunch grasses, not a turf grass,
and they need to be in areas without fire ants.
There are quite a few zoos now
getting really involved in conservation of native species
in the state of Texas.
The Houston Zoo is raising Houston toads
and releasing them.
The Fort Worth Zoo is raising horned lizards
and releasing them.
The San Antonio Zoo is raising horned lizards
in what they affectionately call their lizard factory.
And so this is a wonderful thing.
Zoos are really getting involved in conservation
in their back yards.
[gentle music]
- KAMRYN: Our main goal here is to produced
as many Texas horned lizard as we can.
I am just putting some ants in his little ant feeder.
- ANDY: Horned lizard have a very specific diet.
They feed primarily on the red harvester ant
And if they don't get a sufficient number of ants
or termites in their diet, they just die.
Straight up die.
A notoriously difficult animal to keep in captivity,
let alone to get to breed and produce viable offspring.
It's a real challenge.
- Let's see how they're feeling.
We put the male lizard into the female lizard's tank.
With around 25 healthy breeders,
we're hoping we can get a bunch more babies this year.
That licking and a signs of head bobbing are both of them
kind of communicating with each other that they're interested.
A single lizard female can lay over 40 eggs
in one clutch.
It's still a little bit early in the morning for them,
so these guys are still warming up,
so they're taking it a little slow right now.
Anything with animals, it's unpredictable.
It's kind of up to them if we are going to be successful
or not, but I have a lot of hope we get to put
those babies out on the wild.
- ANDY: I want to thank everyone who came here today.
Big year, big milestone for us.
Today, we are fortunate to release 84 captive-born
Texas horned lizards on a ranch in Blanco County.
Our first release.
Very exciting.
All good?
The landowner has been managing
for native biodiversity since he purchased the range.
This site includes about 1,000 acres of very high quality
horned lizard habitat.
Several hundred harvester ants beds.
In general, one or two lizards per mound.
- BRITTANY: We can back to these for a different location, yeah?
- ANDY: Yeah.
This is a combination of three years of work
when we started this project, breeding lizards in captivity
until we had sufficient numbers to conduct
our first release.
- NARRATOR: Though these lizards have never
been outdoors before,
this is a homecoming of sorts.
- ANDY: This is our first horned lizard
released to the wild.
- NARRATOR: This one little lizard
marks the return of a species to this landscape.
- ANDY: Y'all don't step on it.
If you step on a lizard,
we're probably going to not invite you back.
[laughs]
- It's wonderful opportunity to be able to return
these lizards to the wild, but not just any place,
to paradise for horned lizards,
where we're hoping that they're going to establish
a viable population.
- BRITTANY: Don't run away from me please.
- ANDY: ... that's going to grow.
- JOHN: For years we've been hearing from landowners
that they want to have horned lizards back and we do too,
and so, there's been a lot of research
that's gone in to determining what kind of habitat
these animals need, what kind of threats we need to avoid.
And today, all of the forces came together
for horned lizard reintroduction.
- WOMAN: Hey little buddy.
- ANDY: Going about our daily lives,
we may not notice the changes in the landscape
that squeeze out certain species,
but they certainly do.
The native grasses and forbs that you see in abundance
around me are also key for quail habitat,
and there are quail coming back on this ranch,
there are other species like native pollinators
and migratory birds that depend on exactly
the same sort of habitat
that good land management creates
in this part of the state.
I'm going to let him go because he wants to go.
I really hope I see him again.
- NARRATOR: So, once you release a load of
well-camouflaged lizards,
how do you hope to find them again?
- KRIS: You want to go to work?
Let's go.
- NARRATOR: That's where the dog comes in.
[upbeat music]
- KRIS: Sit.
Go find it.
[whistle]
- ANDY: We've released 15 or so lizards between
me and that stand of trees.
- KRIS: Off. Come.
- ANDY: The goal here today is to try and find
the lizards that we turned loosed a week ago.
- KRIS: Gren!
[whistle]
She's starting to peter out.
- ANDY: The fact that we haven't seen any lizards yet,
and Gren hasn't smelled any yet,
it still doesn't mean they're not here.
They're just really good at hiding.
It's kind of windy day, so she just may not smell them.
But we'll come back in two weeks.
- KRIS: Uh-mm!
[whistle]
Let's go.
Get over.
- NARRATOR: Animals and nature are never entirely
predictable.
- KRIS: Ah-ah! Come here.
- NARRATOR: But months after the first release,
a small but hopeful sign.
- KRIS: Maybe?
She's indicating.
Andy!
- ANDY: Yeah?
- KRIS: Yes! Did you see where her nose dropped?
- ANDY: Two or three of us will spend a couple of minutes
looking to see if we can find what she smelled.
I'm not heartbroken that we didn't find lizards
because we found scat that came from a lizard,
so we know there are lizards out here.
That's definitely horned lizard.
- KRIS: Good girl, Gren!
- ANDY: The lizards that we released back in October,
at least some of them,
survived the winter,
so that's really encouraging.
Yeah!
- KRIS: Yeah!
- BRITTANY: Hello, little guy!
- ANDY: Our strategy is to release around
100 lizards per year on this site for three years.
- NARRATOR: Ongoing releases will improve
the odds of establishing a self-sustaining population.
- ANDY: My hope is that in the future we will find
the offspring of the lizards
that we released still on this ranch.
And my true hope is that we'll find lizard on the next ranch,
and the ranch over there and the ranch over there.
Returning horned lizards to the landscape
so that Texans can enjoy them forever.
- LESLIE: Huge milestone for the San Antonio Zoo.
Very exciting.
- NARRATOR: But even one release
on one patch of restored habitat,
can provide a lot of hope.
- JOHN: See him there? Yeah!
I would say the horned lizard is probably
the reason I'm a biologist today.
Because I could catch them.
They were the only lizard not faster than the little boy.
And they're gone now from most of our landscape,
and so it's like a part of my childhood is gone.
But today my son was here.
And he held his first horned lizard
and he released that horned lizard
back on the landscape.
It's a glorious day.