Reptile & Amphibian Forums

PALM BEACH POST (Florida) 08 August 04 Iguanas invade Palm Beach County (Meghan Meyer)
Delray Beach: Whimsical flower boxes adorn the lawns of Pelican Harbor. Sleek pleasure boats line the docks of this gated community at the south end of the city.
It is a good place to be a snowbird, the retirees living in about 200 condominium apartments and houses say.
It is also a good place to be an iguana.
Like something out of Jurassic Park, the huge lizards — some as big as basset hounds — paddle next to the boats in the C-15 canal. They sun themselves on the sea walls and swim in backyard pools. They eat their way through the flowers and leave piles of droppings all over the docks.
"They're everywhere," said part-time resident Bruce Thompson, who is moving his boat to Jupiter partly to escape the iguanas. "They're ugly as hell. I find them extremely irritating."
The iguanas don't bother Pelican Harbor resident Warren Lodge. He and his 4-year-old Labrador retriever, Bart, watch them swim across the canal every morning.
Bart strained against his leash as he spotted a 4-foot-long, bright green female iguana on the dock during his walk Friday. The lizard leaped up and belly-flopped into the water as Bart approached. He bounded to the edge of the dock and stared as the iguana swam away.
"I don't mind them," Lodge said. "There's nothing wrong with them. They do mess up the dock, though."
The burgeoning South Florida iguana population has exploded north to Palm Beach County in recent years, particularly along the El Rio and C-15 canals in Boca Raton and Delray Beach.
Hibiscus, orchids and herb gardens daily fall victim to the ravenous reptiles. They munch the flowers, leaves and all, leaving only a naked stem.
In Boca Raton, the iguanas soon might have their own stone memorial. After noticing the lizards lolling by the canal, consultants recommended that the city adorn a new Federal Highway bridge with 12-foot-tall iguana statues.
"This colorful and ornately garbed creature could represent the perfect icon for Boca Raton and a theme for a new and more beautiful bridge," the consultants wrote. "Green Iguana are colorfully dressed, enjoy a good salad and sunbathing, are highly intelligent, and they know a prime piece of real estate when they see it."
Some residents protested. The city council hasn't decided whether to use the design.
Several nuisance calls a day
Green iguanas, native to Central America, have made Florida their adopted home for decades. They burrow into canal banks in the suburbs after pet owners, unprepared to care for full-grown iguanas, release them.
Just before Christmas last year, a parkgoer discovered nine 5-foot-long iguanas in a bathroom at John Prince Park. Diane Sauve, director of Palm Beach County Division of Animal Care and Control, suspected someone had abandoned the lizards because they had blankets with them.
"Usually, iguanas don't carry around sleeping bags," Sauve said.
Private trappers, wildlife officers and animal control officers receive several calls a day about nuisance iguanas.
"Part of what we're seeing is the first iguanas that escaped as babies from the pet cages have finally gotten old enough to reproduce," said William Kern Jr., a University of Florida assistant professor who works in the Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center.
He doesn't have to travel far to study the creatures. A colony lives near his office.
Spurred by costly iguana break-ins at orchid houses, Kern plans to post a fact sheet about dealing with nuisance iguanas on the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Web site within the next few weeks.
Green iguanas first flourished in Miami-Dade County, which proved ideal with its warm temperatures.
Two other species live in Florida: the black spinytail, which overran Gasparilla Island off the west coast, and the Mexican spinytail, found only along Old Cutler Road in Miami.
Over the years, reptiles have gained in popularity as pets, and more have escaped or been abandoned.
Moving north, they did not fare as well. Iguanas freeze and die when temperatures dip into the 40s.
The cold stuns them to the point that they fall from the trees. Kern doubts they'll migrate much north of Palm Beach County, though they're found in Martin and St. Lucie counties.
A cold winter might be their only obstacle.
Most private trappers won't try to catch them. If pressed, they will visit an iguana-plagued property for a hefty fee — often more than $100 — with no guarantee of success. And they warn homeowners that, if they manage to remove an iguana, another will take its place.
"I have communities that would hire me on a yearly contract if I could keep the iguanas away," said Allyn Szejko, owner of Wildlife Rescue of South Florida. "I can't."
The swift lizards elude captors by scurrying away, fleeing to water, up trees or down burrows.
In Pelican Harbor, they hide under building foundations and bushes. When cornered, they lash with their tails and bite.
"Imagine a mouthful of teeth like interlocking grapefruit spoons," Kern said. "They can do a lot of damage with their teeth. If you get a big one, it could easily take off a finger, and it wouldn't do it cleanly."
Homeowners who manage to catch an iguana face even bigger problems, Kern said. Florida law prohibits releasing iguanas, an exotic species, into the wild.
"If you catch them, you have two choices," Kern said. "Keep them as pets forever or destroy them."
And the belligerent, territorial adult male iguanas make lousy pets, he said. Most pet stores won't buy adult iguanas.
The Iguana Man
One man claims he has perfected a method of trapping iguanas.
John Harris, known on the Treasure Coast as the Iguana Man, has 52 adult iguanas in a complex of cages he built outside his mobile home in Palm City. He calls it the Iguana Rescue and Compound.
Six years after he caught his first iguana, he's busy filing papers to incorporate his hobby as a not-for-profit organization.
He's printing T-shirts and making signs to post on the road near his trailer park. He has opened the compound for public tours and wants to start an education program with the Martin County School District.
Harris hasn't taken a vacation in six years. He can't find anyone to watch his iguanas.
"They keep me hopping," said Harris, who is retired. "Over the years, I've learned how to catch them and keep from getting bitten."
He uses a snare on the end of a 6- or 10-foot pole, depending on what the job calls for. If necessary, he takes a ladder. If the iguana runs up a tree, he sends his son to shimmy up after it.
But even the Iguana Man has his limitations.
"If they're on open ground or near a lake, we just stand there and wave bye-bye," he said. "They're too fast."
Forget about calling county or state officials to rid your swimming pool of reptilian visitors. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission directs callers to a list of licensed trappers. County animal-control officers will respond only to cases of abuse or neglect.
That's how Sauve met Freddie, the accident-prone iguana now living on her pool deck at home in Loxahatchee.
Animal-control officers first picked up Freddie four years ago after a car hit her. They took her to Sauve, then director of a wildlife hospital, who along with her daughter nursed Freddie back to health. Freddie lived at the hospital for a couple of years, and then one day she disappeared.
"We searched all over," Sauve said. "But we could never find her."
Freddie faded into memory.
Then a week ago, animal control officers responded to a call about neglected reptiles on an abandoned property close to headquarters. When they arrived, they found a gopher tortoise and two iguanas — one emaciated, another nearly dead — hanging from a tree in a wire cage.
Sauve recognized the emaciated iguana's markings and scars. It was Freddie. Again, she and her daughter nursed Freddie back to health.
Under normal circumstances, she would not keep a reptile as a pet. But these were not normal circumstances.
"It's odd that four years later here, she turns up with us again," Sauve said. "I'm not particularly thrilled.But this poor iguana has been through everything."
Next Muscovy duck?
So far, no evidence suggests the green iguanas pose a threat to any native species.
The black spiny-tail iguanas found in greater numbers on the west coast of Florida will, when the opportunity presents itself, eat smaller animals, eggs and baby sea turtles, according to information compiled by the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Green iguanas eat plants. But it's hard to tell how an exotic species will affect the native landscape until that species has established itself. And by then, it's too late. They're here to stay.
"We really need to do something," said Pelican Harbor resident Sylvia Raddi, who lost an herb garden to the invaders. "They're not native to Florida, and we really shouldn't be keeping them."
The debate between pet owners who love the iguanas and those who want them gone sounds familiar, especially in the coastal condominiums of south Palm Beach County, long plagued by the Muscovy duck.
Introduced to Florida in the early part of the last century, the duck population has grown out of control. Those who love them often feed them, which infuriates the people who consider them a nuisance.
"The population is so established, you no longer see most of the native ducks," Sauve said. "It's out of control. My prediction is in a decade, iguanas will be the next Muscovy duck."
Iguanas invade Palm Beach County

Maybe they should drop them all at homes of FLorida state legislators who insist that they have more important things to do than ban the practice of giving iguanas as prizes.

Cindy