In the fall of 2020, three female and two male blunt-nosed leopard lizards, Gambelia sila, were collected from a population at the brink of extirpation in the Panoche Hills of west Fresno County, California. The lizards were transported to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo for the purpose of building an assurance colony via captive breeding. The need for an assurance colony was supported by years of intensive surveys of the population which strongly suggested that the population was in a terminal decline. The project is the result of an extraordinary collaborative effort among multiple governmental agencies and universities. In our talk, we present the data that formed the background for the action, steps taken to advance the project, and what lies ahead for blunt-nosed leopard lizards in the Panoche Hills and across their range.