Cupola gecko population discovered more than 50 years after first sighting
Tuesday, 30 March 2021
An alpine gecko so rare there were doubts it still existed. Now there is proof the Cupola 'ghost' is alive. Samantha Gee reports.
Two confirmed sightings in 53 years. Hundreds of hours searching. Thousands of rocks turned over.
Finally, high in the mountains of the Nelson Lakes National Park, a team led by self-confessed lizard geek Ben Barr, found not only one Cupola gecko – but four.
First seen in a scrubby boulder field above the remote Cupola Hut in the park in 1968, little else is known about the elegantly patterned lizard of the moko pirirākau genus, the te reo Māori name for forest gecko.
The only other confirmed sighting of the gecko was in 2007, it was one of seven lizards classed as data deficient by the Department of Conservation, its threat status unable to be assessed.
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“It has kind of been this holy grail of NZ herpetology, ooh the Cupola gecko, who is going to find that?,' Barr said.
Named after the area it was first discovered in, the Cupola gecko has a grey body with dark markings. It differs from similar species as it has a triangular shaped head with bold V-shaped markings and a shorter snout.
Barr and fellow ecologist Dylan van Winkel conducted a survey for the gecko in 2019, finding only a possible scat in a rock crevice, though they remained hopeful a population was out there.
Along with a five-strong search team, Barr returned to the Nelson Lakes National park earlier this month.
On their last day, one of the team flipped a rock and saw a gecko. He almost caught it but got the tip of its tail, which at the least gave the team a genetic sample for analysis.
Barr returned home to Whangārei, with the thought of the finding the gecko heavy on his mind. He organised to return to Nelson two days later to continue the search.
That first day, his colleague, Marieke Lettink was the first to catch a one. An immature female they named Clingaling.
“I was happy, but I really wanted to get one in the hand, so we could have a close look at it and take photos and get scale counts.”
The next day, after lifting hundreds more rocks, Barr was feeling a bit despondent. He had spent 12 days over two years, looking but not finding anything.
“You lift hundreds of rocks every day, you think, this is a good rock and you lift it, nothing. That goes on, hour after hour, day after day and you are so used to not seeing anything.
“I was thinking to myself, am I ever going to find one of these things? Is it my destiny to just never find one?”
The team moved to another site, Barr flipped rock number hundred-and-something and sitting there was a male gecko, about five kilometres from where they had caught the first one.
Barr said he had to double-check it wasn’t a stick.
“When I personally lifted that rock and saw it, I was like, is it one? I was in disbelief. I was like, oh s… I think it is, I was like, oh my god it is one.
“I was just completely and utterly euphoric, screaming my head off.”
Before the day was out, there was one other spot Barr wanted to search. There in a patch of evening sun, Lettink found another gecko, a pregnant female, named Whetū Ahiahi, meaning evening star, after the pattern on its head.
They were waiting for the genetics to be analysed, but were confident the geckos were of the Cupola variety.
“We were just dealing with ghosts before but now at least we know where there is a sparse population and it means that DOC can actually manage that now.
Barr said future work would be done to try and ascertain the size of the population and ideally, monitor their health over time.
Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō trusts chairperson Hinemoa Conner said the sightings were exciting and added another layer of signifcance to what was already an area of great importance to tangata whenua.
“To know that this area sustained us over centuries and also continues to sustain such a rare species, is something really special.”
More broadly, Conner said the sightings reaffirmed the Nelson Lakes’ significance in terms of Aotearoa’s indigenous biodiversity and would no doubt provide greater understanding of Cupola geckos.
Conner said the iwi looked forward to working with the Department of Conservation as kaitiaki to ensure future conservation efforts were focused towards protecting the species.