NEWS-PRESS (Fort Myers, Florida) 01 January 06 Group wants expanded lizard trapping - Meeting set to discuss 'growing menace' (Don Ruane)
Recent cool nights may encourage one of Cape Coral's more exotic residents to seek more sunlight at the same time one group wants to turn up the heat on the city's trapping program.
The city's population of Nile monitor lizards may be hungry and looking for warmth on a sea wall or driveway, said Kraig Hankins, a city environmental biologist who oversees the city's trapping program.
They also might warm themselves on the side of a road in the early evening, said Michael Orchin, a snake handler and owner of a 9-inch monitor lizard that he uses for educational purposes. He is president of Cape Coral Friends of the Wildlife.
The group wants the city to expand its trapping program. Orchin hopes to meet this month with City Councilman Jim Jeffers to discuss the situation.
The meeting is to share information about what "appears to be a growing menace," Jeffers said. They'll talk about what the city is doing now and could do to address the situation, Jeffers said.
Orchin said he hopes Jeffers will get behind the effort to control the lizard. There are too many to try to eradicate them, Orchin said.
"It's a big problem. No one is quite sure how it's going to be attacked," Orchin said. "They do eat a lot of local wildlife."
Development won't push the lizards out of the area as it has other forms of wildlife, Orchin said.
"These guys could do well in an urban area. They are foragers," Orchin said.
One theory of how the lizard came to Cape Coral is that people released pets that became too big.
"You can buy them in pet stores," Hankins said.
There are no state or local laws against owning them, Hankins said.
The city has a small trapping program that catches about two dozen lizards each year. The program started in 2001. Trapping usually is tried after someone reports a sighting.
"As we have time we put the traps out," Hankins said.
There are no plans at this time to expand the program.
More volunteers, though, might help the city do more trapping, Hankins said.
Student interns have been used in the past to monitor the traps and bring in lizards that were caught. Captured lizards are euthanized and sent to a University of Tampa researcher for genetic and diet studies.
Their diet includes birds, bird eggs and gopher tortoises. Some suspect they also eat Cape Coral's burrowing owls, the official city bird.
The lizards can grow to 7 feet in the wild. The largest found so far in Cape Coral was a 6-foot-2-inch specimen. It was hit by a car in October on Aqualinda Drive, just south of Cape Coral Parkway.
Most of the city's lizard population appears to live in southwest Cape Coral, Hankins said.
But they've been sighted in the northwest and are thought to be on Sanibel Island, Orchin said. The lizards are able to swim.
Orchin said he'll keep his lizard until it gets to be about 18 inches long.
"The problem is when he gets to the point that other people would say I don't want him anymore and throw him in a field. He won't get that chance," Orchin said. Instead, it will be sent to the University of Tampa for research purposes.
Group wants expanded lizard trapping