Endangered
Stephen's Island gecko
Toropuku stephensi
Stephen's Island gecko is a lizard or snake in the family Diplodactylidae — Toropuku stephensi, recorded as Endangered and tied to New Zealand.
The lizard or snake
It was first described from Stephens Island, and occurs in higher densities on Maud Island.
Range and habitat
The preferred natural habitats of T. Stephensi are coastal forest and shrubland, at altitudes from sea level to 225 m (738 ft). T. Stephensi is known from several small islands in the Cook Strait between North Island and South Island of New Zealand. In 2019, a population was also established on Puangiangi Island.
The Stephen's Island gecko, also known commonly as the Cook Strait striped gecko, Stephen's sticky-toed gecko, and the striped gecko, is a gecko in the genus Toropuku in the family Diplodactylidae. As of 2012 the Department of Conservation (DOC) classified the Stephen's Island gecko as Nationally Vulnerable under the New Zealand Threat Classification System.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
The IUCN lists T. Stephensi as endangered, as it occupies limited areas at a small population density. Mainland populations in particular (now T. Inexpectatus) are under pressure from introduced cats, rodents, and stoats. In 2020, T. Stephensi was split into two species, with the Coromandel peninsula populations placed into T. Inexpectatus.
Despite the small area occupied by the Cook Strait island populations, they seem to be stable and protected from introduced predators, as the islands are nature reserves that can only be accessed by permit.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix III. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Stephen's Island gecko 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 Stephen's Island gecko, Wikidata item Q3008593. 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.
