The Phoenix Zoo is creating an “air-conditioned habitat” to protect native lizards from rising desert temperatures.<\/p>\n
PHOENIX \u2014 Arizona\u2019s rising summer heat may be more than even desert wildlife can handle.<\/p>\n
At the Phoenix Zoo, there’s already a new habitat in the works… with air conditioning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lizards we’re going to be putting in, the native Sonoran Desert lizards, obviously are used to warm weather,\u201d said Bradley Lawrence of the Phoenix Zoo. \u201cBut, you know, every year it gets hotter and hotter for longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reptiles can\u2019t regulate their body temperature. Shade and burrows used to be enough. Now, even desert animals are overheating.<\/p>\n
\u201cReptiles like warm weather, but the extreme triple digits, they’re not a fan of,\u201d Lawrence said. \u201cGrowing up, I never thought we would have to worry about cooling off desert reptiles. But we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The zoo is running cold water through concrete in the new enclosure to keep lizards cool. But in the wild, that’s not an option.<\/p>\n
Wildlife biologist Mike Cardwell, who studies rattlesnakes for the Arizona Poison Center in Tucson, said snakes normally spend the hottest part of summer underground.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it stays hot, they’ll sometimes stay underground for a month or so,\u201d Cardwell said. \u201cBut then after the heat started to subside, late in the summer, early fall, these guys didn’t come up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two rattlesnakes he radio-tracked in 2023 went underground, but ever reemerged.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 25 years of radio tracking a lot of rattlesnakes in the Mojave Desert and the Sonoran Desert, I never had a rattlesnake fail to emerge after being underground during the summer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cardwell believes both died during a string of days over 110 degrees because the ground, even three feet under the surface, stayed too hot for them to survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wildlife experts say it’s possible that continued heat could impact wildlife by shifting their habitats to cooler areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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