Indonesian officials plan to close the world-famous Komodo national park for a year to help save its skinny dragons, as the South-East Asian nation steps up the battle against over-tourism.

The park in Indonesia's Lesser Sunda Islands is the only place in the world where it is still possible to see Komodo dragons in their natural habitat.

But the provincial governor says the endangered giant lizards need a break from contact with humans, and has pledged to shut the gates "for an entire year".

The once fearsome predators have become lazier in recent years, in part because the surge in tourists has given them easy food to scavenge, Viktor Bungtilu Laiskodat, the governor of East Nusa Tenggara, said.

Closure would allow the fierce lizards and their hunting grounds to recover from the impact of poaching and contact with humans, he explained, according to Indonesia's Tempo magazine.

The governor stopped short of specifying a date for shuttering the park. “The Komodo dragons are not as huge as they used to be because the population of deer, which are their main food, continues to decline following rampant deer theft in the region,” he said.