Photo: Mike Stocker
Iguanas Spread as Climate Warms
After another warm winter behind us and now with record-breaking summer heat—ideal iguana weather—the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) has declared open season on our exotic reptiles.
Photo: Mike Stocker
But make no mistake, the real invasion in Florida is by humans, not wildlife. Humans cause much more damage to the environment than all of Florida's invasive species of reptiles combined. That said, much has been made lately in sensational media reports about the northward march of Florida's Green Iguanas (Iguana iguana) so we thought it time to say something about them before they forever breach the former freeze line—from about Vero Beach to Tampa.
Individual iguanas have been found as far north as Gainesville but iguanas are very sensitive to cold, anything below 40° (4.4°C) and iguanas become immobile and descend into a sort of zombie state. So iguanas are not currently thriving north of the new freeze line which meanders roughly along the I-4 corridor from Daytona to Deltona to Orlando to Lakeland to Tampa. Its only a matter of time before iguanas evolve a resistance to periodic cold and march on northward toward Georgia.
Individual iguanas have been found as far north as Gainesville but iguanas are very sensitive to cold, anything below 40° (4.4°C) and iguanas become immobile and descend into a sort of zombie state. So iguanas are not currently thriving north of the new freeze line which meanders roughly along the I-4 corridor from Daytona to Deltona to Orlando to Lakeland to Tampa. Its only a matter of time before iguanas evolve a resistance to periodic cold and march on northward toward Georgia.
Photo: Mike Stocker
The Republican led FWC is now actively encouraging homeowners to kill green iguanas on their own property whenever possible. Surely this will end badly. Encouraging carnage without explaining how to do it humanely is shameful, at best. Their policy reads in part
Green iguanas are not native to Florida and are considered to be an invasive species due to the damage they can cause to seawalls, sidewalks, and landscape plants. This species is not protected in Florida expect by anti-cruelty law. Homeowners do not need a permit to kill iguanas on their own property, and the FWC encourages homeowners to kill green iguanas on their own property whenever possible. Iguanas can also be killed year-round and without a permit on 22 public lands in south Florida.
So, South Florida is not quite Jurassic Park, maybe a little more Mad Max meets Jurassic Park in this era of gun-friendly Republican control. Don't be surprised when someone shooting at an iguana hits a human and it makes the headline under "Florida Man Meant to Shoot the Iguana."
No one knows how many iguanas inhabit Florida, they've been spotted here since the 1960s and are now as common as grey squirrels. The main complaint one hears about iguanas is that they eat ornamental plants and poop on garden furniture. They're also known to dig under seawalls and other places. Green iguanas are native to Central America, parts of South America and some islands in the Eastern Caribbean.
Photo: Lori Rozsa
Dens of exotic snakes are already on the march north from Florida's Everglades (mostly Burmese Pythons now found all along the Treasure Coast) now slaughters of iguanas (a group of iguanas is referred to as a "slaughter" not to be confused with what the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission proposes to do to slaughters of iguanas found in. . . well, Florida) can be found as far north as Tampa and Vero Beach and even in the rapidly disappearing swamps around Orlando International Airport. But again, humans are doing much more damage by bulldozing literally everything and building more urban sprawl than any iguana ever could do to your ornamental shrubs in a lifetime of munching.
Photo: Mike Stocker
Iguana slaughters now swarm seawalls, roam yards and parks, and leave a path of unwelcomed trimmed hedges (and poop) in their wake.
Thomas Portuallo, owner of Fort Lauderdale-based Iguana Control, told the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel that 2018 was the busiest year for iguanas for his nine-year-old business. And that was before 2018-2019's frost free winter and record hot spring-summer. Hundreds of thousands of iguanas now creep around Broward, Miami-Dad and Palm Beach counties.
Photo: UF biologist Joseph Wasilewski with Green Iguana (by Joseph Wasilewski).
The prehistoric populations are multiplying like rabbits, so says Joseph Wasilewski, who has studied green iguanas for 40 years. He's part of the University of Florida's "Croc Doc" team of scientists who study wildlife in Florida and the Caribbean.
"Climate change certainly has something to do with it," Wasilewski is quoted in Washington Post as saying. "It's warming things up and allowing them [iguanas] to go further north."
Photo: Mike Stocker
Wasilewski goes on to compare Florida to Grand Cayman saying that Florida needs to get a handle on the green iguana invasion before it gets worse. He said he saw Grand Cayman island go from having no green iguanas in 2000 to having an estimated 1.6 million in 2018. The island launched a large-scale free-for-all killing of iguanas in fall of 2018, and hope to wipe out nearly 1.4 million iguanas by the end of 2019.
Wasilewski says the same thing is happening in Florida, "in the last five or 10 years, I've seen the population literally explode."
“There’s no real way to come up with a valid estimate of the number of green iguanas in Florida. But the number would be gigantic,” says Richard Engeman, a biologist for the National Wildlife Research Center.
About 8 percent of power outages, or 9,200 a year, are caused by animals and birds, says Richard Beltran, a Florida Power and Light spokesman. In South Florida, iguanas are the second leading cause of animal-related power outages, behind squirrels. But that’s well behind power failures caused by vegetation, Beltran points out.
FPL uses raptor guards and bird diverters to cover 75,000 miles of power lines, switches and conductors at 600 substations, he says. If an animal touches two of the three power lines attached to a pole, that's when current zaps them, Beltran says.
Photo: Mike Stocker
The creatures can grow up to five feet long and weigh over 20 pounds. They are fast on land and in water, making them difficult to catch. They have no natural predators. Sexually mature at 18 months they lay a lot of eggs. Destroying the eggs is a humane way of controlling the iguanas as well.
If you have a few iguanas on your property, we suggest you try a philosophy of live and let live.
Photo: Mike Stocker
Cruelty to Animal Statutes still exist in Florida (FS 828.12) but it is legal to humanely euthanize the reptiles on one's own property.
It remains a crime to drown, freeze or poison iguanas. Rat poison is also illegal as you one cannot control what’s going to consume it.
And contrary to popular belief, dogs and cats aren’t at risk from iguana feces. However they can be at risk of slashing by the iguanas powerful claws.
In case anyone missed it, the president of the United States had some choice words to describe Maryland’s 7th congressional district on Saturday morning. Here are the key phrases: “no human being would want to live there,” it is a “very dangerous & filthy place,” “Worst in the USA” and, our personal favorite: It is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” He wasn’t really speaking of the 7th as a whole. He failed to mention Ellicott City, for example, or Baldwin or Monkton or Prettyboy, all of which are contained in the sprawling yet oddly-shaped district that runs from western Howard County to southern Harford County. No, Donald Trump’s wrath was directed at Baltimore and specifically at Rep. Elijah Cummings, the 68-year-old son of a former South Carolina sharecropper who has represented the district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996.
It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are “clean, efficient & well run," which, of course, they are not — unless you are fine with all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector-general recently called “a ticking time bomb."
In pointing to the 7th, the president wasn’t hoping his supporters would recognize landmarks like Johns Hopkins Hospital, perhaps the nation’s leading medical center. He wasn’t conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where they write the checks that so many retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It wasn’t about the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort McHenry. And it surely wasn’t about the economic standing of a district where the median income is actually above the national average. No, he was returning to an old standby of attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority black district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments. It was only surprising that there wasn’t room for a few classic phrases like “you people” or “welfare queens” or “crime-ridden ghettos” or a suggestion that the congressman “go back” to where he came from.
This is a president who will happily debase himself at the slightest provocation. And given Mr. Cummings’ criticisms of U.S. border policy, the various investigations he has launched as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, his willingness to call Mr. Trump a racist for his recent attacks on the freshmen congresswomen, and the fact that “Fox & Friends” had recently aired a segment critical of the city, slamming Baltimore must have been irresistible in a Pavlovian way. Fox News rang the bell, the president salivated and his thumbs moved across his cell phone into action.
As heartening as it has been to witness public figures rise to Charm City’s defense on Saturday, from native daughter House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, we would above all remind Mr. Trump that the 7th District, Baltimore included, is part of the United States that he is supposedly governing. The White House has far more power to effect change in this city, for good or ill, than any single member of Congress including Mr. Cummings. If there are problems here, rodents included, they are as much his responsibility as anyone’s, perhaps more because he holds the most powerful office in the land.
Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.
Baltimore Sun Editorial Board
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