The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and collaborators from the South African National Biodiversity Institute and Bayworld Museum have rediscovered the rare Orange Sandveld Lizard, or nucras aurantiaca, during surveys in December last year.

The lizard has only been recorded twice, with the last record being more than ten years ago.

The EWT’s Conservation Planning and Science Unit is surveying for species currently listed as data deficient by the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list of threatened species.

Data deficient species do not trigger any red flags during environmental-impact assessment (EIA) processes, as they are not included in the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment’s environmental screening tool, which provides site-specific EIA process and review information.

This exclusion leaves these species vulnerable to extinction before we can understand their ecology, habitat requirements, population dynamics and threats.

The orange Sandveld lizard is one of ten reptiles currently considered data deficient in South Africa, with a further 44 reptiles listed as species of conservation concern on the red list – divided into categories of critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable or near threatened.

The EWT’s objective for the surveys, which are funded by the Anglo American Foundation, is to gather enough new data to uplist them either to a relevant threat category or confirm that they are not threatened, impacting the level of protection they are afforded under the law.

The scientists spent two weeks between December 5 and 18 last year, surveying the region where the orange Sandveld lizard was last recorded a decade ago near Lambert’s Bay on the West Coast.

The region is already under pressure from agricultural activities and recently granted wide-ranging mining prospecting rights. The surveys involved intensive and targeted trapping and many hours of active searching.

The survey team reported excitement to find and confirm the identity of the lizard at one of the trapping sites and will submit the data collected towards the reassessment of the species’ conservation status.

Owing to its apparent scarcity and the substantial habitat transformation of the only location it is known to occur, it will likely be uplisted to one of the red list threat categories.

If the lizard is uplisted, it will qualify for increased legal protection and be included in the next updates of the environmental screening tool and the EWT’s threatened species no-go mapping tool, which identifies areas of significant biodiversity impact, especially for localised species of conservation concern.

The species and its conservation status will then have to be accounted for during future EIAs in the region, ultimately helping to protect the West Coast and its wildlife from further unregulated and harmful developments.