A typical rare animal

The Alpine She-oak Skink (Cyclodomorphus praealta) is a long-bodied, short-legged lizard to about 25 cm long.  It is known only from low shrubland and heathlands of Victoria and NSW at altitudes in excess of 1500 m asl.  All Victorian records are within 5 km of the Mount Hotham and Falls Creek ski resorts and about half of these are on private property while the remainder are within the Alpine National Park.  The species is classified as endangered in Victoria and Australia, and has been listed under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act (FFG).

This classification is about as straightforward and unambiguous as it can get for an animal.  The skink is uncommon, has a very restricted habitat, much of which is under threat of development, and very little is known about its ecology.  Nevertheless there are complicating factors which may have an effect on how plans for the species conservation could be different.

She-oak skinks are widespread in Tasmania from the coast to the sub-alps and have been known from that state since the 1830s.   The first record for Victoria, however, was not until December 1962, from Genoa, a near-coastal town of far East Gippsland.  In 1967 a second animal was found in the same general area and in 1971 one was found near Mount Hotham in the Victorian Alps.  At this time all three lizards were identified as Tiliqua casuarinae the same species as that found in Tasmania and parts of NSW.  While the discovery for Victoria was interesting there was no indication that the species was rare elsewhere. 

Taxonomic research in 1984 determined that she-oak skinks were distinct enough to warrant their own genus - Cyclodomorphus.  Furthermore the mainland species was found to be different from that found in Tasmania so the Victorian and NSW she-oak skink was renamed Cyclodomorphus michaeli.  In 1995 the alpine populations in Victoria were distinguished from those of the coast and were named Cyclodomophus praealtus.  After this reclassification - and perhaps because of it - many new records for the Alpine She-oak Skink were discovered and the range was increased from the the Mount Hotham area to the Bogong High Plains and a single outlying record from the Wellington Plains north-east of Licola (it has also been found in alpine areas of NSW).

The point to be recognised from this example is that determinations of rarity are often dependent upon the taxonomy of animal groups.  Before 1984 it was thought that there was a single species of she-oak skink which was widespread in Tasmania and the east coast of NSW and was rare in alpine and coastal Victoria.  Current thinking is that there are now three species at least one of which - the Alpine She-oak Skink - is rare and under threat.  The taxonomic reviews that described the new species has also galvanised ecological survey effort so that we now know the Alpine She-oak Skink is significantly more widespread than was thought twenty years ago (85% of the records are from 1995 or later) and this opens the question of whether it may be in other alpine areas but not yet discovered.

A curious side issue regarding the common name of the Alpine She-oak Skink is that there are no she-oaks (Allocasuarina) anywhere within its range.  The first she-oak skink described was from Bruny Island in Tasmania where Allocasuarina monilifera (Necklace Sheoak) is one of the commonest shrubs of the heathlands in which the lizard is found.  Common names of this specificity are often unhelpful in determining the habitat of the species.