# Big Lizards



## rip18 (May 24, 2005)

A couple of guys from work & I went down to Charlotte Harbor fishing a couple of weeks ago (did pretty good), & decided to ride out to the end of Boca Grande & watch folks fish for tarpon for a while.  I almost made them wreck the truck trying to get them to stop because I thought I had seen an iguana.  I told them that I HAD seen a 3-foot lizard right beside the road!!!  After getting them to turn around, there was a large, male black spinytailed iguana beside the road.  We ended up seeing about 60 of the critters which are exotic pets that have escaped & started breeding on the island.  They dig a burrow kind of like a gopher tortoise, but smaller.  The ones we saw ranged in size from about a foot long to almost 4 feet long.  Some of the residents are apparently upset because these vegetarian lizards are eating their landscaping & gardens...  

I never was able to get a good picture of a big male, but this one turned out well.  It is a little less than 2 feet long.


----------



## leo (May 25, 2005)

*Nice pic rip18*

wonder how they will effect the rest of the native animals and reptiles around there??


----------



## rip18 (May 25, 2005)

Good question, Leo.  The short answer is who knows.  The long answer is below.

There are definitely some exotics (mostly plants) on Boca Grande that are having a bigger impact that the lizards - such as Brazilian pepper.  Many exotics (even extremely invasive ones) don't have a big impact when they are first released, it takes time for the population to build up before exponential growth & negative impact becomes evident.

Here is a short summary from a study that was done on the iguanas on Boca Grande:

Wildlife ecologist Liz McKercher studied Boca Grande's iguanas for a University of Florida master's thesis in the late 1990s and estimated the population to be 2,000.

"That was 1999, and the population could have increased exponentially since then," McKercher said.

Among her goals, McKercher wanted to determine the iguanas' diet and how they affect the environment.

"They eat mostly anything, vegetation, seeds, insects, fruits," she said. "They've also been reported to eat native lizards. They alter the ecosystem a bit, eating vegetation, dispersing the seeds of items they eat. As to the impact on tortoises and other lizards, the jury is still out on that."


----------



## Paymaster (May 25, 2005)

Man! thought that was the Gallopagos(sp) islands.


----------



## rip18 (May 26, 2005)

Sorry about that Paymaster, I guess I should have said that this was just south of Sarasota, not too far from Tampaspicer & some of our other Florida brethren.

While trying to find out what kind of iguanas they were, I also found out that there is a population of Yemen chameleons (the mitten-handed, turret-eyed, color-changing, jerky-moving, funny looking lizards) that is breeding & reproducing in Coral Gables, FL.  There are over 38 exotic reptiles & amphibians with established populations in south Florida.


----------

