BOCA BEACON (Boca Grande, Florida) 29 July 05 Where are the iguana emails?
When Lee County Animal Services director Scott Trebatoski attended a meeting about Gasparilla Island's iguana over-population problem last year, he found the Community Center full of angry islanders demanding an immediate solution.
"A bunch of people wanted them off their properties," Trebatoski recalled. "I thought we'd have access to a good chunk of the island to assess the situation."
The Nov. 17 meeting was organized by the Gasparilla Island Conservation and Improvement Association. Trebatoski knew he would need landowners' permission to study the iguana population, the first step toward effectively controlling it. Misty Nabers, the GICIA's executive director, told the audience they could e-mail her their permission and she would forward it to Trebatoski.
Since then, silence. No e-mails. No phone calls. No permission.
"I'm not sure how to square it," Trebatoski pondered. "It creates an issue on removal, since there's no way to assure population reduction without accessing every property on the island. They're all over the place."
In any case, e-mail notification of permission would be insufficient, Trebatoski said. He would need a written, signed statement and a waiver of liability from the landowners to be on proper legal footing.
The iguanas, an invasive exotic species, are weakening the sand dunes with their deep, excavated burrows. They drive out endangered gopher tortoises and eat their eggs, as well as ruining gardens, raiding birds' nests and invading houses.
On a recent visit with Dr. Jerry Jackson, the biologist who is seeking the iguana's weak spot, Trebatoski said he saw 50 to 100 iguanas in a couple of back yards. That made him wonder if those were typical. He now thinks the GICIA's initial estimate of 10,000 iguanas on the island was conservative.
"At the meeting, I got a strong impression a huge majority of the people on the island wanted iguanas removed, especially since there was no visible opposition, yet we've had very little luck getting permission to remove them," Trebatoski observed. "We've been limited to accessing state property and other public property. Everything else has been observational."
In those areas, on the dunes and around the lighthouse parking lot, Trebatoski has seen "a ton of burrows."
"I'd be curious, do these things have burrows where people have more manicured yards?" he asked. "They're avid climbers. We watched one hit a tree at a dead run and shoot right up it. When the iguana came down, it hit the ground running."
What Jackson is proposing, Trebatoski said, is a behavioral solution to control the iguana population similar to that some veterinarians are advocating to control feral cats. It involves vasectomizing the dominant male iguanas, which will then keep other males away from their harems without being able to reproduce.
"I'm not sure it's possible to vasectomize a lizard. I haven't talked to any veterinarian who's tried it," Trebatoski said. "It must be almost like microsurgery. Since the genitalia of lizards is inside a flap, it would require a very skilled surgical procedure. We may be breaking new ground."
Trebatoski said he would raise the question at a licensing meeting with Lee County veterinarians next month. Informally, he has heard from people on all sides of the issue – those who want the iguanas removed, those who want them left alone and those who don't understand why they're a problem.
"It's a major effort to find ways to reduce the population," Trebatoski said. "I'm a little skeptical that we can achieve complete elimination, but we could make it manageable. It's bad, though."
Where are the iguana emails?