Dogs used to help find elusive lizards

South Australian researchers hunting down a tiny lizard previously thought to be extinct have taken a new approach - and it has gone to the dogs.

Habitat loss through grazing explained the disappearance of the pygmy blue tongue lizard until it was rediscovered 20 years ago.

Now, in the grasslands around Burra in South Australia’s Mid-North, Roxy the sniffer dog is pointing researchers in the right direction.

Flinders University researcher Torben Nielson uses mealworms to entice the rare pygmy blue tongues out of their hiding holes, but it is Roxy that leads him to them.

An army of volunteers scoured a hillside a few weeks ago, managing to locate about 25 burrows.

Then a group of experts managed to find twice as many.

But the theory is that Roxy will be able to find them all, helping researchers gather information about the pygmy blue tongue and find out how graziers can keep sheep in the area without affecting the lizard population.