Canberra Grassland Earless Dragons at the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. Photo: James Coleman.
The ACT Government will pay Melbourne Zoo almost $2 million for a four-year program to breed critically endangered Canberra Grassland Earless Dragons.
The small reptiles have been a conservation flashpoint at Canberra Airport, which wants to build a long-approved road.
In a deal with the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Canberra Airport has agreed to pay the ACT Government $1 million to go towards the ACT’s breeding program.
The department’s intervention came after protesters, mainly from the Conservation Council ACT Region and Friends of Grasslands groups, argued the small lizard species now only exists on up to 40 hectares of temperate grassland in the Majura and Jerrabomberra valleys – including the patch of land where the road will be built.
But the condition has not assuaged the protesters, who have been joined by the ACT Greens.
ACT Greens deputy leader Jo Clay said the offsets and conditions in this road development approval were an attempt to buy the goodwill of the community in exchange for habitat degradation, the annihilation of the earless dragon, and possibly the listing of many other temperate grassland species as threatened.
“We call on the ACT Labor Government to use all compensation funding from the road development to protect remaining natural temperate grassland habitat; otherwise, there will be nowhere left in the wild to reintroduce dragons from the breeding program,” she said.
Melbourne Zoo, which provided Canberra Grassland Earless Dragons to Tidbinbilla to start their colony, has its own breeding program for Victorian Grassland Earless Dragons.
It will be tasked with expanding the small colony of dragons from the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.
According to the contract, the zoo’s Manager of Herpetology and Mammals, Alex Mitchell, and Grassland Earless Dragon specialist, Rory Keenan, will run the program.
A Victorian Grassland Earless Dragon hatching. Photo: Rory Keenan/Melbourne Zoo.
Melbourne Zoo is required to build the captive colony to 200 breeding individuals and generate further Earless Dragons ready for reintroduction to the wild, as well as improve their genetic diversity.
It will also need to build a new climate-controlled and biosecure breeding facility for the Canberra Grassland Earless Dragons, which are known as ‘fussy breeders’.
The ACT Government will provide dragons from the Tidbinbilla colony and/or the wild to the zoo, provide Territory staff to work with the zoo and manage the overall transition from Tidbinbilla to the zoo.
The zoo will make all the bred dragons available for release or continue the program, pending further funding.
Under the contract, the zoo is expected to build the breeding colony to 50 to 100 dragons by 28 February 2027, 80 to 130 by 28 February 2028 and up to 200 by 28 February 2029.
A final report and a strategy for ending or continuing the program, subject to further funding, is due by 30 June 2029.
Melbourne Zoo hatched its first Victorian Grassland Earless Dragons in 2023 and is bringing the species back from extinction.
Until January 2023, it had not been sighted for more than half a century.
Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve opened its breeding facility in 2021, with the ACT Government in 2020 providing $2.1 million over three years for the initial stage of the project.
The purpose-built facility, along with a specially designed quarantine facility, can house up to 80 Canberra Grassland Earless Dragons.
Melbourne Zoo and the University of Canberra have lent their expertise to the Tidbinbilla program.
The 2025-26 ACT Budget allocated $4.5 million to breeding programs for the Canberra Grassland Earless Dragon, including the Melbourne Zoo program, and temperate grassland habitat restoration.
Canberra Airport plans to proceed with its Northern Road project in the coming months.
“We proposed additional measures to enhance the nature-positive outcome, which the department has accepted,” a Canberra Airport spokesperson told Region.
“The approval confirms that there’s no increased risk of extinction and no fragmentation.”
