VANCOUVER SUN (British Columbia) 28 August 03 Plague of giant iguanas infests south Florida: Lizards are only the latest non-native species to see population boom (John-Thor Dahlburg, Los Angeles Times)
Key Biscayne, Fla.: If this were a tabloid newspaper, the headline might scream: Hungry Giant Lizards Invade Florida Towns!
"They eat the flowers, [go] in the pool and mess it up," complained Ralph Lindberg, manager of the Commodore Club South, a group of condominiums on this exclusive, palm-fringed island south of Miami. "You try to chase them, but they live in the tops of palm trees, or in holes in the ground."
In neighbourhoods from Key Biscayne to Boca Raton, it is the night, and day, of the fearsome-looking iguana. Escaped from captivity, or turned loose in the wild by pet owners, the large, usually green-skinned reptiles that can reach six feet in length are multiplying rapidly.
Native to Central and South America, the voracious, fleet-footed iguana has no natural enemies in the suburbs of South Florida.
Colonies of the big lizards now inhabit a Fort Lauderdale park, some of the most select communities of Palm Beach County and islets of the Florida Keys. At Fairchild Tropical Gardens, which claims to be the largest botanical garden in the continental United States, the blossom-munching creatures have wolfed down rare, exotic plants like a biblical cloud of locusts.
Iguanas, larger than any found naturally in the United States, have the fierce appearance of miniature dinosaurs. They are herbivorous, however, and are believed to present no risk to humans beyond the salmonella bacteria they carry and may transmit if handled.
The evident explosion in their numbers is just one more instance of the headaches created in Florida by "exotics," that is, non-native species of plants and animals that have got loose and found the lush, subtropical setting as much to their liking as humans have.
In recent years, giant pythons have been spotted slithering through the Everglades. A non-American species of fern imported by florists as an ornamental is devastating tree islands in a wildlife preserve west of Boca Raton. In Cape Coral on Florida's Gulf Coast, carnivorous Nile monitor lizards, an African species that can grow almost as big as iguanas, may already number in the thousands, and could endanger the local population of burrowing owls.
In the Miami area, at least 40 non-native species of foreign reptiles and amphibians can now be found, often feasting on native species and reducing their numbers, said Josiah Townsend, a herpetologist from the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. Among the intruders, iguanas are some of the most successful.
In theory, a good, long cold snap should kill the iguanas, and a drop in temperatures last winter did thin their numbers. But the wily lizards learned that if they stayed in water, they had a better chance of keeping warm, he said.
At Ocean Village Condominiums near the park, hordes of iguanas coming over the fence have devoured the hibiscus bushes and fouled the grounds with excrement.
Employees put out cages to trap them, but the clever reptiles quickly became wise to the danger and avoided them.
"We try to capture them. The biggest one we've caught was five feet, four inches," said Jim Dowd, manager of the complex. But despite having to cope with what he calls a "big, bad nuisance," Dowd speaks of the animals with something akin to awe.
"The iguanas have the knowledge of millions of years stored in their computers. It's in their brains. I'm always amazed by them," he said.
Iguanas may have established a toehold in Florida a half-century ago.
Some may have been stowaways on freighters plying routes between their homelands and Miami, but most were probably released by pet owners and dealers aghast at how huge the reptiles had grown.
Florida law allows keeping the animals as pets, but outlaws the introduction of iguanas or any other non-native species into the wild.