Brachylophus

They are running out of forest

Brachylophus does not need a slogan. It needs native trees still standing, and fewer cats, rats and mongoose on the ground where females nest.

What is going wrong

  • Habitat. Logging, farming, mining and fire shrink the canopy these lizards never really leave.
  • Goats and burning. On small islands, free-ranging goats and the fires used to manage them strip food trees.
  • Introduced predators. Feral cats, black rats and the small Indian mongoose take eggs, hatchlings and nesting females.
  • Isolation. Iguanas do not commute between islands. Lose a forest on one island and that genetic lineage is gone.

All species are on CITES Appendix I. That bans commercial international trade. It does not stop a mongoose on the forest floor.

Fijian coastal forest and lagoon, the kind of landscape Brachylophus still needs.
Dry and coastal forest is the remaining habitat — not gardens, not mangrove parking lots.
This site does not run a field programme.

If you want to help on the ground, fund the organisations already working in Fiji.

Organisations working in Fiji

Most conservation effort has gone to the crested iguana. The three banded species still need predator control, forest protection, and honest surveys of islands that have never been sampled genetically.

Common questions