LOOKING FOR TJAKURA

The search is on across Australia's deserts for a culturally important vulnerable lizard.

- KATE CRANNEY

WE FAN OUT across the landscape between spiky clumps of spinifex. Heads down and moving as one, we carefully scan the ground in front of us for traces, for clues. We’re all looking for the burrows of a very special animal. I’m here at Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park, in Central Australia, to join a diverse team, ranging from Traditional Owners and rangers to citizen scientist school children, assembled to look for tjakura, the great desert skink.

“They [the old people] have been looking after all these tjakura for a long time,” says Cedric Thompson, a Mutitjulu Community Mala Ranger (Anangu rangers who care for Country in Uluru-Kata Tjuta NP). “That’s why it’s for us mob to look after them now.”

Tjakura is a striking desert reptile species that’s of widespread cultural significance for First Nations people. Belonging to the same family as the better-known blue-tongue lizards, tjakura is a skink with a solid body. It reaches 45cm in length and has smooth scales coloured orange-red on its upper body, fading to bright yellow on its under- belly – perfect camouflage against the red desert sands. In some places they can also be grey in colour.

Tjakura is the species’ name in the languages of the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara and Ngaanyatjarra peoples. In other areas, it’s known as mulyamiji, tjalapa, warrana or nampu. In English, the great desert skink is its common name.

Celebrated in art, dance and song, tjakura is an important Tjukurrpa (Creation) animal, and was once a food source, said to taste like fish. But because its numbers have been declining, Traditional Owners are now opting to protect the lizard. Occurring almost exclusively on Aboriginal land, tjakura is endemic to Australia, with a natural distribution across a large part of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and into the north-western corner of South Australia.