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Butaan Project camera trap archive |
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Monitors
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Save Your Monitors!
Monitor lizards are heavily exploited for their meat and leather and for the international wildlife trade. There have been very few investigations into the ecology and conservation status of monitor lizards, and, as far as I am aware, no funds from the trade in monitor lizards has ever been used to fund research.
This project aims to improve this situation in the following way.
1. People who keep monitor lizards donate their dead animals to a national Save Your Monitors group.
2. Members of the national group make products from the dead monitor lizards (e.g. leather goods, skeletal preparations) and sell them on ebay
3. The profits generated are distributed as small grants to students in countries where monitor lizards live, allowing them to make basic investigations into local monitor lizard populations.
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 The crocodile monitor, Varanus salvadorii, is perhaps responsible for more hospital visits than any other lizard in the USA, despite the fact that only about 200 are legally imported each year. Crocodile monitors have a remarkable set of teeth that inflict deep and severe flesh wounds. The most serious result in permanent disability and almost all crocodile monitor bites leave permanent scars. Read about people's experiences with Varanus salvadorii in our review.
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The Caspian monitor lizard inhabits the KharaKhum desert of Turkmenistan. The very hot summers and very cold winters mean it can only venture above ground for a few months of the year. This makes it a very angry lizard, so watch out
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The
International Varanid Interest Group is a volunteer-based organization
established to advance varanid research, conservation, and husbandry,
and to promote scientific literacy among varanid enthusiasts worldwide.
Membership to the IVIG is free, and open to anyone with an interest in
monitor lizards. Click Here
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Reprints, bibilography, translations, reviews, reprints, links and more.
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Monitor lizards (Varanus species) include the largest lizards in the world and are of considerable ecomonic value in some of the poorest countries in the world. There are many unresolved and serious conservation and welfare issues connected with the trade in monitor lizards.
Click here for the Monitor Lizard site
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The first two articles in this occasional series on the monitor lizards of Asia discussed two rare and enigmatic animals found only in rainforests and mangrove swamps. Virtually nothing is known of their biology and they are only rarely seen in captivity, at least on this side of the Atlantic (Bennett 1993, 1995). |
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 Dumeril's monitor is a large lizard from southeast Asia about which very little is known. Until a few years ago they were not uncommon in the pet trade in Europe and the U.S.A. but breeding success with the species was very limited and today they rarely appear on dealers' lists. |
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As the monitors spread across the Earth experiencing different habitats and climates they diversified. Over many millions of years this process has resulted in the emergence of at least seventy or eighty (probably many thousands of) species. Some of them appeared to have died out quickly, whilst other, apparently ancient, species have survived until the present.
 Megalania prisca by Iain Curran, 1995 |
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 Our relationship with monitor lizards stretches back over 90,000,000 years. For almost all of this time they have been the predators and we the prey. The first documented cases of predation on monitor lizards by humans date back about 40,000 years (King 1962). Today mankind's relationship with the monitors is a complex one. They are undoubtedly the most important of the lizards to the human race. |
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 There are very few records of the longevity of monitor lizards in captivity (Flower 1925, 1937, Snider & Bowler 1992, Bennett 1994) and virtually none of their lifespan in the wild. The record appears to be held by the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, where a Komodo dragon was kept for 24.5 years. The animal was adult when acquired, and a total lifespan of about 50 years has been predicted for this species (Auffenberg 1981).
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About Mampam |
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Our pet-owners' guide to savannah monitor lizard is the first ever
written by people who have studied the animals in the wild and bred them
in captivity. There are at least seven books in print about the savannah
monitor, but we think this is the only one worth reading! Last few
available
U.K. Customers
Customers outside U.K.
To mark the export of half a million savannah monitors from Africa for
the pet trade in the 21st century “The Truth about Varanus
exanthematicus has been released as an ebook. Just £3 worldwide!
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Mampam T-Shirts |
 Support our work by wearing our shirts; colours and styles for everybody!
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Help Mampam |
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Please help us in our conservation efforts by making a small donation to us through PayPal... every little bit helps!
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The Butaan Project |
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 We use feces to investigate diet and activity areas of butaan. In total we have examined more than 1500 samples, possibly the largest ever collected for a single population of reptiles.
Butaan and their relatives are huge specialised frugivores, much bigger
than any other specialised frugivorous animal in the Philippines. They
need a constant supply of fruit but lack the wings that allow other
frugivores to forage in different forest fragments. Large and immobile,
the butaan depends on a very narrow range of foods.
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