Video screenshots
On July 10, mucheng township cadres in Longling County, Baoshan City, took a video of rare and endangered wild animals with their mobile phones during the patrol. According to the judgment of Dr. Wang Jishan of the Kunming Survey and Design Institute of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration, it should be a national class I key protected wild animal round-nosed monitor lizard, which belongs to the extremely endangered species. This is also after more than 10 years, the critically endangered species round-nosed monitor lizard has once again made a rare "appearance" in Longling County.
"Oh yo yo! Big lizard! Big lizard! At about 3:30 p.m. on the same day, when Yang Guojun, a cadre of Laoman Village in Mucheng Township, and his party of 3 people patrolled to the banks of the Nu River and waited for the yangshan, they suddenly heard the sound of stones rolling down from the stone ridges by the river, followed the prestige, and saw a large lizard preparing to "escape and hide"... The anxious Yang Guojun quickly recorded this fleeting precious image with his mobile phone (video footage shows): a huge lizard, alertly protruding from the crevice of the stone, looking east and west as if looking for something, and then swinging its long tail, dancing on its thick and powerful limbs, quickly climbing up the stone and disappearing into the bushes.
"Looking at the morphology of the monitor lizard in the video data, combined with its distribution range in Longling, it should be a round-nosed monitor lizard." Dr. Wang Jishan said. The round-nosed monitor lizard is large, the adult body length can reach 2 meters, the tail length is about 1.5 times the body length, the limbs are thick, the fingers are sharp, and the back has small maculas, so it is also called the "five-clawed golden dragon"; it comes out day and night, it looks a little clumsy, but it moves quickly when preying; it can both go up the tree or swim in the water, and likes to eat fish, frogs, rats and other foods.
According to Dr. Wang Jishan, the number of round-nosed monitor lizards in China is not much, the country is only seen in South China, in Longling County mainly inhabited in the Small Black Mountain Nature Reserve in the Jiangzhongzi Reserve and the surrounding area of the dry and hot river valley rivers, trees, grasses and other hidden environments, the wild encounter rate is usually low, this time to find this wild round-nosed monitor lizard is very meaningful. The round-nosed monitor lizard belongs to the national level I key protected wild animals, and has been listed as a critically endangered species on the Red List of Biodiversity of China, a critically endangered species in the Red Book of Endangered Animals of China, and an Appendix II species of the Washington Convention (cites). This is enough to explain the degree of "rare and endangered" it is in.
After more than 10 years, the critically endangered round-nosed monitor lizard has reappeared in Longling. "This big lizard has only been seen on TV before. I have heard from the older generation that in 2002, when Mucheng Township was repairing the Anding Ditch, I saw this big lizard. Yang Guojun, a cadre of the village of Laoman village in Mucheng Township, who was born and raised here, added.
A good ecological environment is an indispensable condition for wild animals to "inhabit". Dr. Wang Jishan said that the round-nosed monitor lizard is one of the important indicator species of the quality of the natural ecosystem of the landscape, and is very sensitive to the quality of the ecological environment of the habitat. It also reflects the protection effect of the natural ecological environment of Longling County from another side. "Our ecological environment here is getting better and better, and we can see (photograph) more animal species than before!" Cai Shuangfa, a photography enthusiast in Mucheng Township Government, told reporters. It is reported that since Cai Shuangfa began to engage in photography in 2019, he has recorded nearly 100 species of wild animals such as mammals and birds in the narrow area of Mucheng Township in Longling County, especially since 2021, he has recorded new record species in Longling such as crowned hornbills, yellow-footed squirrels, crested wheat chickens, and crowned finches. (Yu Yunjiang, Hou Yunpeng)