Primeval Survivors

Stephens Island, a cliff-faced rock in Cook Strait, is a protected wildlife sanctuary. Unique among the island wildlife, is the sole survivor of a reptile species that has been extinct for 135 million years.

This creature is the tuatara.

Ages ago, it lived worldwide, now it is confined to a few off-shore islands of New Zealand. Evolution has bypassed these reptiles for they have remained almost unchanged since prehistoric times.

Tuatara(s) survive on a diet of beetles and wētā(s) and can live for up to 150 years. In all that time, they rarely venture more than 100 metres from their burrows. Early this century, lighthouse keepers here were paid to shoot marauding bands of wild cats that were eliminating the tuatara population.

Today, on Stephens Island, a mere two kilometres long, there are an estimated 100,000 tuataras. The Wildlife Service has permitted this group of zoologists to capture a number of tuatara(s) for research purposes.

(Zoologist) That one is... ...25.9 Tail length... ..is 23.2

(Narrator) Six male and six female tuatara(s) have been selected for this experiment, to see if tuatara(s) can be bred successfully in captivity.

(Zoologist) 40... minus 10

[Crunching]

(Narrator) Extinction once seemed inevitable for the tuatara but in the timeless domain of Stephens Island, at least, survival seems assured.

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