Contact Information

Texas Nature Trackers
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
(800) 792-1112 ext. 8062
tracker@tpwd.texas.gov

 

Texas Horned Lizard Watch: Become a Horned Lizard Watcher


The first thing you can do to help with the Horned Lizard Watch is to adopt a site. A site can range from your backyard to your ranch or local park. We simply ask you to visit your site at least 3 times between May and September to look for Texas Horned Lizards.

You may want to adopt more than one site and visit them often. We hope that you will record data at your sites for many years so that we may understand trends in Texas Horned Lizard populations.

If you don't have access to a particular site that is likely to support Texas Horned Lizards, you can still contribute to our monitoring effort. Simply record any Texas Horned Lizards that you see through the year. If you make an effort to sight Texas Horned Lizards for us, but do not see any lizards, then please let us know.

All the information you will need to participate in the Texas Horned Lizard Watch can be found in the:

Texas Horned Lizard Watch Monitoring Packet | PDF

Already the results of Texas Horned Lizard Watch are improving our understanding of where Texas Horned Lizards still exist and how that relates to the abundance of harvester ants and red imported fire ants. Over the long term, we will be able to assess how patterns of land use, fire ant expansion, urbanization, etc., relate to the abundance of horned lizards. We may be able to offer suggestions on land management or fire ant control that could ultimately benefit Texas Horned Lizards.

For your part, participants will be provided with annual updates on the project, along with other interesting information on the Texas Horned Lizard. For participants that provide data over several years, TPW will also offer posters, books, or other forms of recognition or reward for long-term service. Finally, many of our participants tell us that Texas Horned Lizard Watch has provided them with the opportunity to remember, and in some cases to relive, a time long ago–of endless summers filled with searches for the elusive horny toad.