The ecologist and Instagrammer Dr Kylie Soanes was in her home office recently, making a video for her followers about the Victorian Grassland Earless Dragon.

The palm-sized lizard — last spotted in 1969 and thought to be extinct — was rediscovered in 2023 in a paddock on Melbourne's rapidly urbanising western fringe. The city's tabloid newspaper, The Herald Sun, has accused the lizard of worsening Victoria's housing crisis by slowing construction.

"We have to move past this houses or species dichotomy, it's ridiculous and damaging," Soanes says in the video.

Soanes, who is a research fellow at The University of Melbourne, wants to save the plants and animals that cling to life in our cities and towns.

"Part of the reason I started doing social media was to gauge how true it is w

See Full Page