HERALD TRIBUNE (Sarasota, Florida) 26 October 06 Iguana Busters gets bomb threat
Placida: A Placida man who runs Iguana Busters, a company that traps and kills iguanas, received threatening phone calls after the company was featured Tuesday on the Today Show, where his method of killing the creatures was discussed.
Dale Bowe, vice president of Iguana Busters, told authorities that, after the segment ran, he started receiving calls from a belligerent woman who called seven times and told Bowe that his method for killing the animals -- freezing them -- was cruel. Then she cussed at him and said a bomb had been planted at the business.
Bowe told a Charlotte County sheriff's deputy that he tried to explain to the woman that freezing them is a humane way of killing the animals.
The woman, who had blocked her phone number, told Bowe, "If you freeze one more iguana you won't like what happens to you, (expletive)," according to a sheriff's report.
A few moments later she called back and said a bomb was in the building.
Bowe told the deputy that he knew no explosives were there because the building is small and only he and another employee had been in the building.
While the deputy was at the scene, he said Bowe also had gotten an e-mail from someone in Ohio who also questioned the way the iguanas are killed.
Bowe did not return a call from the newspaper Wednesday afternoon.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061026/NEWS/610260562/1006/SPORTS
SUN-HERALD (Charlotte, Florida) 27 October 06 No mercy for iguanas
Englewood: A Placida trapper who took heat for freezing feral iguanas caught on Gasparilla Island is following the state's Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission's proscribed protocol for humane treatment.
Scott Bowe of Iguana Busters, a state-registered nuisance animal trapper, told a local TV reporter that he places captured iguanas in a freezer.
"When you freeze them, they simply fall asleep and then they freeze," he said.
The interview was rebroadcast Tuesday nationally on the "Today" show. Afterward, Iguana Busters received angry and threatening phone calls from people who had seen the interview.
However, according to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission and other area trappers, callers were misguided.
The commission's policy has been clear since March 2005, after a trapper was charged by the Delray Police Department with cruelty for freezing the lizards alive.
At that time, Lt. Atwell Pride of the commission, said the charge was unjustified.
Freezing iguanas "seems to be a more humane method than others," he said. "Basically, what happens is, the metabolism slows and it stops breathing."
Commission spokesperson Joanne Adams was unaware Thursday of any change in commission policy, but referred further questions to Sgt. Len Barsinger of the agency's Fort Myers office.
Barsinger did not return phone calls Thursday, nor did Iguana Busters. Other area trappers, however, defended Iguana Busters' actions.
"That's how Fish & Game requires you to put down animals," said Zelph Overton Ridgeway of Ridgeway Reptiles Inc., in Murdock. "They require you to freeze them down. That is the law."
"I've heard of people who take them and put them in the freezer," said Alan Bird of North Port. "They basically fall asleep and die."
"It's not crazy," said Christopher Harlow of Wildlife Removal Services in Cape Coral. "It's all based on what Fish and Game recommends. They say it is the most humane way."
Harlow said he has trapped more than 300 iguana in the Boca Isles subdivision alone since August when Lee County changed regulations to permit iguanas to be destroyed on the island.
In the last 30 years, Gasparilla Island has been overrun by the non-native lizards, which cause widespread environmental havoc.
Last March, Lee County commissioners agreed to levy $46 for every $1 million in assessed property value to finance eradication of an estimated 12,000 iguanas -- or, roughly, 10 for every year-round island resident.
Libby Walker, of the Lee County Public Resources Department, said Thursday that an island advisory panel will meet next Tuesday with licensed trappers to discuss specifics of an iguana-eradication contract.
Trappers have to Nov. 15 to submit bids for the contract. The board will select a trapper on Nov. 16.
The iguana contract promises to offer steady work.
"This problem will not be resolved in one year," Walker said. "It will take time and the efforts of a lot of people."
The meeting will be informative because it should shed some light on how to frame his bid, Harlow said.
Right now, he said, he charges roughly "$30 to $40 an hour as a flat daily rate. If I do it per lizard, it depends -- $15 to $25" each.
Phil Simmons of Advanced Nuisance Animal Trapping in Englewood said he'll be at the meeting for the same reasons.
"If they want bottom dollars, I don't know if it's worth it," he said. "I couldn't go under $25 a head."
Stacie Kepes of Critter Control of Fort Myers Inc., said she is also interested in bidding.
"We presented (Gasparilla Island residents) with a couple of different ideas years ago," she said. "I am not sure what they are wanting to do now."
Most trappers use cage-like collapsible traps -- such as HavAHarts -- made from galvanized wire that feature a reinforced spring-loaded front door.
The traps, which range from 32 to 42 inches long, 10 to 12 inches wide, and 12 to 14 inches tall, catch the animal alive.
Iguana "are easy to trap if you know where they are," Harlow said. "Obviously, the ones sitting on the side of the road" are easier to catch than those "you have to physically go in after."
Traps are baited "with bright flowers and all kinds of fruit; just about any fruit will work," he said.
Ridgeway said the "bright flowers" are hibiscus plants, which are plentiful on Gasparilla Island. "That is why they are around the houses," he said.
Simmons said he has trapped iguana "right in the bushes at the state park." He said he'd deploy up to 30 traps across the island and augment those with snare traps -- especially near sewer and culvert pipes.
"The big ones live in there," he said.
Once lizards are caught, there's no option but to destroy them.
Rather than freezing, Simmons kills with a "euthanizer box, which uses carbon dioxide.
"It's nice and easy on them," he said. "They really don't know what is going on. They shut their eyes and go to sleep."
Several other trappers said they, too, use a euthanizer box because, unlike a freezer, it's portable.
Gassing and freezing are more humane than other options.
"The state doesn't allow poisoning, so other animals can't get poisoned," Bird said. "(Poisoned iguanas) could crawl under something -- under a porch -- and rot."
The best way, he said, would be to "shoot them in the head."
"If you are going to exterminate something, the quickest way to kill it is the most humane way," Bird said, before conceding it "wouldn't be good PR" to do so in a Boca Grande residential area.
There isn't much value in iguana hides or flesh, trappers said.
"Some people eat them," Harlow said. "As far as their skin goes, I've never got into any detail about it."
And there is little sympathy for the lizards.
"They should not be here. They have no predators and they can lay 40 to 80 eggs and they will produce three, four times a year," Bird said. "So, you do the math."
Ridgeway, who operates an alligator farm, said he'd have no problem dispatching iguanas -- dead or alive.
"I'd just feed them to the alligators," he said,
http://www.sun-herald.com/NewsArchive2/102706/tp1ch5.htm?date=102706&story=tp1ch5.htm
