Artificial refuges created to save the reptiles of Doñana

European gecko in Donana. Credit Juan M. Pleguezuelos.

November 2009. The Aznalcóllar mining accident, which happened more than 11 years ago, contaminated part of the Coto Doñana National Park and, in particular, damaged reptile habitat there. Now a team of Spanish researchers, who have been studying the reptile community since 2000, have shown that, by setting up artificial refuges, the disappearance of natural refuges had a serious impact on lizard and snake numbers.

Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) and the University of Barcelona (UB) studied the reptile community in the Doñana ecological corridor. The scientists found the population in 200 to be severely depleted, and were only able to find one of the 13 reptile species present in the surrounding areas - the European common gecko (Tarentola mauritanica).

"Despite all the landscape restoration work after the disaster, the habitat had lost almost all the natural refuges for reptiles, so we theorised that this was the reason behind the lack of reptiles", said Juan Manuel Pleguezuelos, lead author of the study and a researcher at the Department of Animal Biology at the UGR.

Five year experiment
The team carried out a five-year experiment in order to show the need for refuges that provide protection against predators, and microclimate conditions. They created artificial refuges (120 groups of tree trunks) on a 24-hectare experimental site. They could thus monitor any changes over time in the reptile community at this site and compare them with another, similarly-sized site without any such refuges.

Tree trunks homes a success
"The modified area with the artificial refuges showed faster recuperation of the reptile community in terms of diversity and abundance of species than the control area that didn't have any artificial refuges", says Pleguezuelos.

Ocellated, or walled lizard. Photo credit Juan M. Pleguezuelos.

After the new refuges were installed, the reptile community grew from just one species, the European common gecko, in 2000-2001, to six species in 2006. It also increased in abundance fivefold.

The biologists also deduced that colonisation by reptiles of the Guadiamar Green Corridor was "transversal rather than linear"; it didn't actually act as a corridor for the reptiles, or at least not during the initial stages of colonisation. According to the researchers, the reptile populations colonising the Corridor came from areas immediately bordering it, not from the source areas that the Corridor is supposed to connect; the marshes of the Guadalquivir in the south and the Sierra Morena mountain range in the north.

"The results suggest that landscape rehabilitation programmes shouldn't overlook the availability of refuges for wildlife, a vital resource for Mediterranean reptiles, and something that can be put into place using an system as inexpensive as waste tree trunks", concludes the biologist.

The results were published in the journal Restoration Ecology