Monitor Lizard confiscation

While staying at park HQ, the park received a confiscation of about 260 water monitors. These large lizards are popular restaurant food in towns, and are put in large jars of rice wine for drinking on special occasions. At least 220 of the lizards were still alive so the park decided to release them. Here are a few pictures of them in the sacks they arrived in, just prior to release.

It's great that the Forest Protection Department seized these lizards, and that there is a large area of well protected habitat in the park in which to release them. However, it’s hard to know what is the ideal thing to do with such a large number of large lizards. There is always the risk of transmitting disease, but a lengthy quarantine is not really an option with so many animals. It’s not possible to put them all back where they came from, since they will have been collected over a large area and then delivered to the trader from whom the seizure was made. However, releasing them all in one place to an area where the current population and carrying capacity are unknown is also risky. Sometimes there are no easy answers, but the national park just have to do the best thing that they can do.