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WINK (Ft. Myers, Florida) 28 July 04 Giant Lizards Create Big Problems for Cape Coral (Aimee Reus)
Cape Coral: Cape Coral's problem with wild Monitor Lizards may be getting worse since one of the City's Monitor Lizard trappers resigned. The City gets hundreds of calls -- from people who are afraid the lizards will harm children and pets.
Monitor Lizards are non-native, and these African reptiles are actually competing with native alligators for a top position in the food chain. They are also eating away at many of our endangered animals like gopher tortoises and burrowing owls. Residents want the City to hire more trappers.
Monitor Lizards throw Evelyn Otte's Southwest Cape Coral neighborhood into a panic. Otters's has lived in Cape Coral for more than a year . The Spreader Canal is home to her numerous, wild backdoor neighbors: all sorts of reptiles, including a large number of non-native Monitor Lizards lurking in the water.
"I always come out with the dogs because now I know they're there," Otte told WINK News, "and I don't know how they'll react if you come up close." Otte's moved here from Denmark. She didn't know how to react to the invasive creatures. More than five of them hang out around her hibiscus plants, in her yard, and in between her home and her neighbor's property. She worried about her small dogs and knew she had to do something.
Trappers in Cape Coral received more than three-hundred calls in the past year "I think this is about 60 lizards... I think we've caught," admitted Kraig Hankins. The biologist Kraig sets traps around the Southwest Cape where most of the sightings come from. Monitor Lizards tend to bury themselves along the banks of canals.
Hankins says there's not much these non-native reptiles can't do to survive: making it difficult to get rid of them. Trappers usually use chickens, eggs and squid as bait to lure these lizards into these cages. They used squid to get this one, and it will be euthanized. Hankins explained, "We don't know if we can prevent them, but at least we're trying to keep the numbers down."
Pet stores all still selling these lizards as exotic pets and once they grow to two or three feet, people are releasing them into the wild.
http://www.winktv.com/x10834.xml
Giant Lizards Create Big Problems for Cape Coral

Some more media and mini-van fat driving mommy = sensationalized bull$hit.

I've been herping all my life here and have yet to see any of those species.

Your beautiful little water female came from this problem!!!!
LOL

John Light
Pristine Pythons

Haha, very true man... and it's so mean and nasty- Watch out it might eat your kids.Ironically its the calmest water I've ever kept, go figure.

You folks in south Florida have crocs, gators, monitots and tigers to hunt. Sure I see a few gators here but ya'll get to hunt fun critters. I wanna move. lol

Scott
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Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.