Tenerife speckled lizard

The lizard or snake

Tenerife speckled lizard is a lizard or snake in the family Lacertidae — Gallotia intermedia.

Range and habitat

The Tenerife speckled lizard is a lacertid (wall lizard) endemic to Tenerife in the Canary Islands. It is the smallest member of the clade containing the western islands' giant species. Although it is believed that the species was once widespread throughout much of the island, nowadays it is only known from a small area of coastline in the extreme west of the island, and also from Montana de Guaza in the extreme south.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

In crisis

The total number of animals in the northwestern distribution area is 500 (estimated in 2008), in 40 isolated populations along altogether 9 km of coastline. The main threat to this lizard is predation by feral cats and, to a lesser degree, by rats. The lizards are increasing in number since the turn of the century as a result of control of introduced mammals.

Tenerife speckled lizard is 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 Tenerife speckled lizard, Wikidata item Q3009484. 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.