Several Texas horned lizards call the Urban Greenway at Tinker Air Force Base home.
To study the horned lizard and safeguard its home near the Greenway, Tinker partnered with the Williams Natural Gas Company, U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services, University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University. These groups have pooled resources and manpower to accomplish the research.
“Williams bent over backwards to help us,” said John Krupovage, Natural Resources program manager. “To offset disturbance to an area in which they were replacing a pipeline, they paid for research equipment so we could learn more about the horned lizard’s behaviors and better understand how other projects on base could impact the species.”
This small, quick reptile is often called a “horned toad” or “horny toad” because of the horns on its head and its flat, toad-like shape. It begins the day basking in the sun to raise its body temperature. By afternoon, it has moved into the shade to cool off.
To fool predators, it makes use of light and dark camouflage and can flatten to the ground to avoid making a shadow. In less than a minute, it can vanish by burrowing up to three inches deep in loose sand and soil. If really put to the test, this warfighter will puff up, hiss and squirt blood from a gland on its eyelids.
In mid-May, Tinker volunteers and OSU researchers began collecting 10 to 20 horned lizards for the project. Each horned lizard is outfitted with a tiny canvas backpack carrying a radiofrequency transmitter. The biologists use locators and antenna to track the lizards’ whereabouts as they move around the base.
These locations are then pinpointed using Global Positioning Systems to map their routes.
The biologists also implant a microchip the size of a grain of rice into the lizards’ bellies so they can identify individual lizards.
“The understanding we get from the research will allow us to manage the horned lizard and its habitat so the species can continue to thrive,” said Krupovage.
“We want to know the status of the horned lizard population here,” said Natural Resources biologist Ray Moody. “What type of habitats do the lizards prefer here? How far does their home range extend? Where do they hibernate at Tinker and how deep? Information is available on the horned lizard in Texas, but less is known about the species in Oklahoma and specifically at Tinker.”
As more is learned about the horned lizard in this part of the state, Tinker will share information in a database maintained by the Oklahoma Natural Heritage Inventory at OU. They, in turn, share the information with researchers throughout the world.
Oklahoma law classifies the Texas horned lizard as a sensitive species, which protects it from collectors or hunters. By protecting the habitat of sensitive plants and animals, Tinker maintains mission-critical access to the land, water and air on base. Access restrictions could increase if the status of the horned lizard was raised from sensitive to threatened or endangered.
“Will the ecosystem come crumbling down if we lose one sensitive species? Probably not, but there could be far-reaching effects,” said Moody. “We’re part of a complex ecosystem. Everything is interconnected and species rely on one another. One missing part can disrupt and destabilize the whole system that supports humans as well as the critters within it.”
The decline of the horned lizard since the 1950s may be due to a variety of factors, including loss of its habitat, insecticide use, introduction of non-native fire ants and the decrease in the native harvester ants that are the main diet of the horned lizard. Also, until forbidden by law, humans were collecting horned lizards as pets. The Natural Resources staff hope their work with Williams Natural Gas Company will help protect the Texas horned lizard and its habitat here.
