Critically Endangered
Burgan skink
Oligosoma burganae
Burgan skink is a skink in the family Scincidae — Oligosoma burganae, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to New Zealand.
Appearance
The Burgan skink has a glossy brown colour with a yellow grey abdomen. It has minimal or no scales on the interior edge of its ear opening and usually only three supraocular scales on the crown above the eye.
Range and habitat
The Burgan skinks preferred habitat are herbs and shrubs above 900 m in the mountainous regions of the Rock and Pillar Ranges as well as in the Lammermoor ranges of Central Otago. The Burgan skink is a nationally endangered species of skink native to New Zealand. It was described from a specimen found near the Burgan Stream, in the Rock and Pillar Range, Central Otago.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
Most skinks forage in leaf litter or under cover. Burrowing species slip through sand or soil more than they climb.
In crisis
As of 2012 the Department of Conservation (DOC) classified the Burgan skink as Nationally Endangered under the New Zealand Threat Classification System.
Burgan skink is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Burgan skink, Wikidata item Q3350572. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
