BOCA BEACON (Florida) 01 July 05 Researcher awaits iguana study funding
Although biologist Dr. Jerry Jackson has signed a contract with Lee County Animal Services to help rid Gasparilla Island of spiny tailed iguanas, he hasn't seen the county's promised $16,000 research grant yet.
Meanwhile, Jackson and his wife Dr. Betty Jackson have been traveling to the island about once a week since May to study the invasive reptiles at their own expense.
"When we get the money, we'll hire a couple of graduate students to help us," Jackson said. "The wheels of bureaucracy are moving slowly, but we're progressing."
Meanwhile, Jackson can't wait to get his hands on the dead iguanas in Scott Trebatoski's freezer.
"Animal Services has been on Gasparilla Island catching them for us, and they have about 35 so far," said Jackson, a professor and Whitaker Eminent Scholar at Florida Gulf Coast University. "We may need more."
Many island residents would be glad if he took them all. Iguanas have been blamed for everything from blocking dryer vents to eating gardens and baby birds.
Now, it seems, they may be threatening the island's coastal environment as well, by burrowing into sand dunes.
Jackson has been contracted by animal services director Trebatoski to find a way to eliminate, or at least control, the island's estimated population of 10,000 spiny-tailed iguanas. The dead iguanas, which were trapped and humanely euthanized, will yield a lot of information about how the exotic reptiles have adapted to life on Gasparilla Island since they were released here about 30 years ago.
The Jacksons needed a permit from the university's Institutional Animal Care Committee before they could actually touch live or dead iguanas. They got it on June 24.
"It didn't hold us up, because we had a lot of baseline work to do," Jackson said. Their observations have already yielded some surprising information.
The adult iguanas living in the island's sand dunes behave like prairie dogs, working together to construct elaborate burrows with multiple entrances. Some of their tunnels go 6 feet into the dunes before they turn, creating a potential erosion problem.
"We're not dealing with individuals, but groups of individuals," Jackson said. "There's usually one dominant male, several females and juveniles living together. The males have harems, and they keep other males away. No one who's looked at the iguanas here has given much consideration to that."
Vasectomizing the dominant males, so they retain their aggressiveness but can't reproduce, could help control the population. Jackson admitted he didn't know if that was feasible, or even possible.
Necropsies on the dead iguanas will help Jackson determine their population structure, sex ratio, ages, sizes, parasites and reproductive condition.
"Do they have a narrow or wide breeding season? Are they carrying salmonella, and are they a reservoir for West Nile virus, like alligators? If we kill them, we want to get as much good out of them as we can."
Researcher awaits iguana study funding