HERALD-TRIBUNE (Sarasota, Florida) 21 June 06 Gasparilla decides to go pro for iguana trapping (Kevin Dale)
Boca Grande: As hundreds of iguana hatchlings crawled their first invasive steps on Gasparilla Island, the committee charged with removing them agreed to hire professional trappers to round up the reptiles.
"We clearly need a professional, and the local population is probably incapable and unwilling" to handle the problem, said committee member Ronald Gutman.
Before Tuesday's "iguana tax" committee meeting, the board's residents came up with a sketchy removal program in which islanders alone would be responsible for trapping the black, spiny-tail iguanas.
Under this proposal, the committee would have purchased traps and some freezers to store dead iguanas until Lee County animal control officers could remove them from the island.
It wasn't clear how the animals would be killed, but arming residents with pellet guns seemed to be a favored approach. The idea was "you trap it, shoot it and freeze it," said Libby Walker, Lee County's public resources director.
The island's iguana population dates back to the mid-1970s, when, the story goes, a resident freed a handful of unwanted pets.
With no natural predators and an ideal habitat, the reptiles flourished on the 7-mile-long island and now are estimated to number 10,000, 10 times the number of full-time human residents.
Some of the taxing committee's five members devised the resident-run plan as a low-cost solution, but they decided on hiring professionals after a Lee County official showed them a cost comparison between the resident-run program and hiring a trapper.
Using "rough numbers," Walker said, a removal effort led by residents could cost around $48,000. She said it could cost around $60,000 to hire a trapper, assuming he caught 4,000 iguanas at $15 "per critter."
The first strategy would cost the owner of a $1 million property $33; the second one would carry a $46 dollar assessment on this fall's tax bill. Lee County would then have to put the iguana trapping out to bid for a couple of months.
But the committee seemed ready to let one reptile collector start work immediately. Manuel Hernandez of Miami drove to the meeting at the Boca Grande Community Center to offer his services. On the East Coast, Hernandez captures reptiles and sells them to wholesalers who distribute them around the country and world.
"I would do this at no cost," he said, perking up the ears of the committee members. Hernandez, who wore a necklace with a golden iguana pendant, estimated he could trap 50 to 100 of the iguanas in a day.
But Hernandez warned the committee that one trapper or collector alone won't be able to put a dent in the island's iguana population, which has grown from 2,000 to 10,000 in the past five years.
"You've got a huge problem that's growing out there by the minute," he said.
In a suggestion that wasn't taken up by the committee, board member Peter Sholley suggested that the problem reptiles could be caught, then sold for their skins.
He read off a list of pricey iguana-skin products for sale on eBay, including Gucci shoes and "even a $285 porkpie hat.
"We might even work with a tannery here to get our iguana leather on the market."
Gasparilla decides to go pro for iguana trapping