SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) 06 June 05 Iguanas growing out of control
Fort Lauderdale: The iguana population is exploding, and it's probably too late to stop the non-native lizards from moving deeper into landscaped neighborhoods in Palm Beach County.
Thousands of them are devouring expensive plantings and leaving droppings that can carry salmonella, said Kenneth Krysko, a herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.
"Every year it just gets worse and worse. Ten years ago it was rare to get a complaint on an iguana. Now we get a few iguana calls every week," said Dan Szychowski, Boynton Beach animal control supervisor.
Krysko gets iguana reports from Loxahatchee and Palm Beach Gardens to the Keys.
"They're breeding out of control and they're everywhere. They're a huge problem," he said.
The population boom is most visible now, as vivid green iglets skitter out of burrows on canal banks through June and July, peak hatching time for iguanas in South Florida. In a few years these iglets, an endearing term for baby iguanas, will darken and grow to be 4- or 5-foot lizards. The adult lizards, dark olive females or reddish-gold males in breeding mode, are most active in the warmest months.
The green iguanas reach maturity in two to three years and often live for more than 15 years, Krysko said. "Iguanas can really pump out a lot of offspring over their lifespan," he said.
Scientific literature documents the first iguanas being turned loose in Florida in the 1960s, according to Krysko. With Florida weather perfect to warm their cold-blooded systems and natural predators left behind in Central and South America, iguanas are thriving.
"In Palm Beach County, the thing to do is remove them before the population explodes like it did elsewhere," he said.
Boca Raton residents Rollie and Sheryl Martin are taking a defensive approach, spraying garlic-based iguana repellent around their flowers after the reptiles destroyed a Hong Kong orchid tree and ate rows of impatiens.
"Anyone can go into a pet store and buy a baby iguana for five or 10 bucks," Krysko said. "They get a 10-gallon tank and within a year, it's too big for the aquarium. The next thing you know it's three feet long. If it's a male and it's mature, it can become aggressive in breeding season."
But one man's fascinating lizard can be another man's plague. Some people harbor both views and wrestle with the contradiction.
Iguana control falls into a no-man's land.
As a non-native species, they're not protected by state or federal laws, except the Florida law that prohibits cruelty to animals, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Willie Puz said. Nuisance iguanas can be humanely and privately trapped, but they have to be killed or kept as pets because it is illegal to release them.
Delray Beach homeowner David Johnson says he has captured 356 iguanas.
"Number 356 is the most gorgeous one yet," Johnson said, gently clipping fishing line from the neck of a neon green iguana he lassoed in his back yard along the C-15 Canal, on the Delray Beach and Boca Raton border.
Johnson slips No. 356 into a clean plastic crate and drives it to Delray Beach Animal Control, where officer Ginny Feldmann shuffles it into a cage to join Nos. 354 and 355, delivered by Johnson earlier in the week.
Next stop for the iguanas that Johnson dubs the "three amigos" is Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control - for lethal injection.
Johnson, a software engineer, spent two years researching iguanas and trying to minimize their damage in his Pelican Harbor neighborhood. He became a state-certified trapper and created a Web site, www.iguanatrapper.com.
Iguanas' biology leaves them in a near-stunned state in cool temperatures, so Johnson tried freezing them as a form of euthanasia. That prompted a neighbor to file an animal cruelty complaint with Delray Beach police.
Johnson was cleared of the charge after police checked with state and local agencies and found his methods legal and humane, but he decided to leave euthanasia to the county. He has earned accolades for thinning the herd and gets pleas to help clear other communities, but threats keep him looking over his shoulder.
The Martins asked the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for guidance, but they use their own ingenuity to clear stubborn iguanas from their yard in Spanish River Gardens along the El Rio Canal.
"At first they're a novelty, especially the bright green ones," Rollie Martin said. "But as they get older, they get uglier."
Four or five adult iguanas sometimes show up in their yard, and a few have jumped from treetops to their second-story roof. "I don't think I'd mind them if they didn't do so much damage," Martin said.
The Wildlife Care Center in Fort Lauderdale gets about 1,000 iguana calls a year and admitted almost 200 sick and injured iguanas to its hospital last year from Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
"Iguanas are usually afraid of people, but they could bite or swat with their long tail if cornered," said Diane Watchinski of the care center.
Watchinski encourages humane trapping and even adoption, if people have space for an iguana habitat. But adoption is for the chosen few, and iguanas' swimming ability allows them to commute easily between neighborhoods.
"I've never heard of a case where iguanas have been in a neighborhood and disappeared," said Bill Kern, an assistant professor at the University of Florida's Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center.
For more information on trapping and a list of authorized trappers, go to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Web site at www.myfwc.com or call the commission in Tallahassee at (850) 488-4676.
Iguanas growing out of control