So what’s the difference? The The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has determined that the Texas Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum) is a species of “Least Concern”. In a nutshell it’s not endangered and they don’t expect it to be anytime soon. I thought a lot about the Texas Horned Lizard tonight when I was walking out of the grocery store. As I made my way to my truck I was walking across the asphalt of the parking lot and remembering the seventies when it was an undeveloped soccer field. My older brother and a few of his peers practiced the game of soccer in this field. Me being the kid more interested in insects and reptiles spent these hours watching the Texas Horned lizards zap ants with their tongues off the trails leading to the ant hills. These were some great memories for me. It was less than a mile from my house and I could watch several “horny toads” eating ants for over an hour. Once in awhile I would pick one up to show another kid and the lizard would squirt the blood from its eye as a distress signal. Fascinating on so many levels. Today the field is gone, as are the ants and the Texas Horned Lizard from the intersection in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. When one thinks of Northeastern Oklahoma, they don’t think of Texas Horned Lizards, unless you were there in the 70’s and 80’s before they went away. I miss them, they were a special part of my childhood. One of my earliest interactions with reptiles and in an area so rich in diversity it also included ornate box turtles, prairie king snakes, common snapping turtles, graham’s crayfish snakes and Texas Horned Lizards. The Texas Horned Lizard has disappeared from a great majority of its range in Kansas, Oklahoma, and from what I hear Texas too. Many contributing factors played a role in this. Real estate development, road mortality, invasive ant species that the lizards never adapted to and probably herbicides and pesticides. Today the horned lizard is protected in Texas and Oklahoma. I think about the war we wage for the preservation of the Western Diamondback Rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox), another IUCN Species of “Least Concern.” I am not saying that rating is without good reason, there is miles of habitat where the western diamondback lives undisturbed and will likely not go extinct anytime soon. But like the Horned Lizard, the Western Diamondback has disappeared over a lot of its native range too. Many of our memories are too short to remember a time when the atrox existed over much of Oklahoma and parts of Arkansas too. Don’t get me wrong, they are still there. Some healthy populations of diamondbacks exist in Western Oklahoma and a few isolated populations still exist in Arkansas too as well as Eastern Oklahoma. Another place you don’t really think of when you think of the Western Diamondback. Texas seems to have a large population of them too although my guess is it is not near what it once was. The threats facing the rattlesnake seem to be similar to the Texas Horned Lizard without the inclusion of the invasive fire ant which is thought to have replaced the harvester ant in certain locales. Road mortality and land development are probably killing more specimens than unregulated collecting will. But today the legal collecting of the horned lizard has stopped in Texas and Oklahoma. It still happens, believe me it still happens but it is no longer sanctioned by state wildlife officials who seem to think it’s alright. The IUCN (who I am a big supporter of) does not think that either the Texas Horned Lizard or the Western Diamondback rattlesnake face significant threats over a large part of their range in Mexico. But why do we protect one and not the other in Texas and Oklahoma? A question I have raised several times over the years without a solid conclusion. Many people state that the populations of atrox are fine, even though they too disappeared from much of the same range the horned lizard did. Maybe the rattlesnakes have adapted better than the horned lizard, but I still don’t see the diamondbacks. Not in the places I used to. It’s more of a personal observation over why we should continue the push to reform rattlesnake collection. Bag limits would be a great start. - Ray Autry
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 02:45:51 +0000
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