The Fort Worth Zoo just released a record number of this Texas animal into the wild
The Fort Worth Zoo just released a record-breaking number of Texas horned lizards into their native habitat, zoo officials announced Tuesday in a press release.
In total, the zoo, in partnership with the Dallas Zoo, Caldwell Zoo, Fossil Rim Wildlife Center and Pearland Nature Center, released 617 Texas horned lizards into the wild at Mason Mountain Wildlife Management Area. Nearly half of the lizards — 301, specifically — were hatched at the Fort Worth Zoo, officials wrote in the press release.
Mason Mountain WMA is a restricted-access park located in the Llano uplift in the Texas Hill Country.
The Fort Worth Zoo is home to the biggest breeding group of Texas horned lizards kept by humans and was the first zoo to successfully breed the species, which is the state reptile of Texas and the mascot of Texas Christian University. The zoo started its horned lizard conservation project in 2011 as a way to fight against the extinction of the animal. The zoo’s techniques with breeding and husbandry have caught on with other organizations statewide.
“The more we study and learn about horned lizard behavior, reproduction, and interactions with other organisms and communities within their preferred habitat, the faster we can decipher key factors for establishment of populations in new areas,” Fort Worth Zoo’s Senior Curator of Ectotherms Diane Barber said in the press release. (An ectotherm is a cold-blooded animal.)
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The zoo also partners with TCU and Texas Parks and Wildlife to monitor the released hatchlings through adulthood and reproduction in the wild.
