Venomous lizards often die if moved too far from their suburban homes

SCOTTSDALE – Daniel Marchand, a member of the Phoenix Herpetological Society, holds a foot-long Gila monster in his hands.

A woman found this lizard on her pool deck. It can’t go back to the wild; new homes have been built there.

As construction pushes into the desert around Arizona, Gila monsters and other desert creatures are feeling the squeeze. But unlike other species that can move on or be relocated to undeveloped areas, Gila monsters are tied to the land where they hatch.

“Most people are under the assumption that reptiles live on instinct only,” said Thomas R. Jones, amphibian and reptile manager for the Arizona Game & Fish Department. “But lots of reptiles, especially long-lived species, know the area where they live quite well. They learn where the hiding places are. They learn where to find food or water.”

Gila monsters are known to live for more than 20 years in the wild, Jones said.

“It’s just like taking a 10-year-old kid out of a neighborhood they know well and taking them to the other side of town,” Jones said.

Gila monsters tracked after relocation far from home travel six times farther than lizards placed closer, said Brian Sullivan, a researcher at Arizona State University. He said those lizards could be trying to find their home territory.

“What we’ve found is that if you move a Gila monster less than 1,000 meters from its home territory, they are home the next day,” Sullivan said. “But if you moved them more than that, they were either lost or died.”

Volunteers at the Phoenix Herpetological Society are called dozens of times a year to move Gila monsters from yards and about 50 percent of the time can relocate the lizards to nearby desert, Marchand said. When they can’t, the nonprofit group brings them to its center here and tries to find homes for them at zoos and museums.

Others, such as the one plucked from the woman’s pool deck, are cared for at the society and used in the group’s educational outreach programs. As many as 30 Gila monsters come to the society each year, Marchand said.

“People may think that it would be fine to get them away from people and homes by moving them far away, but it is absolutely a death sentence for these animals,” Marchand said.

The society is one of a few organizations with a special agreement with the Arizona Game & Fish Department to move the lizards. Gila monsters are a protected animal. State law prohibits anyone from touching one without a special permit, let alone capturing, transporting or keeping it as a pet. People caught disturbing them are given a hefty fine.

Disturbing them is also dangerous; Gila monsters are venomous and can deliver a nasty bite if they feel threatened, said Anne-Marie Krueger, a spokeswoman for the poison control center at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center.

Gila monsters spend the majority of the year underground or hidden. In April and May they become more active, searching for eggs and baby rabbits to eat.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2007 at 12:01 am and is filed under Local. Tags for this post: Arizona, Local-Arizona, page-a19, Samantha M. Novick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.