Florida refuses to ban iguana sales, despite calling on landowners to kill them
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – You can still buy a live iguana in Florida, despite the state’s call on homeowners to kill any on their property.
Anyone in Florida with a credit card and the desire for a 5-foot lizard can buy one for $179.99 or so, with guaranteed live delivery by overnight mail. Or they can pick one up in person at a bricks-andmortar reptile store.
Despite the furor ignited by the state’s recent call on the public to kill iguanas as non-native urban pests, it’s still legal to buy and sell them.
Snakes at Sunset of Miami sells baby iguanas for $19.99 and offers an albino green iguana for $1,249.99. Underground Reptiles of Deerfield Beach carries a range of sizes and prices, selling babies for $9.99, with a buy-three-get-onefree offer. Strictly Reptiles of Hollywood pays hunters to catch them locally for sale and imports them from farms in Central America.
Kate Mcfall, Florida director for the Humane Society of the United States, says the state’s failure to ban the iguana trade allows the problem to worsen out of deference to the pet industry.
“We need to address the root cause for the presence of iguanas in our state and that’s to ban the purchase or possession of iguanas as pets,” she said. “We have the worst invasive species problem in the world, caused primarily by the pet trade. To encourage the public to go on their own killing campaign without addressing the root cause, doesn’t make sense because their numbers will obviously continue to grow.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has banned the private purchase of Burmese pythons, lionfish and several other non-native species that have established wild populations in Florida at the expense of native animals. But it hasn’t done so for iguanas, despite the success with which these lizards from Central and South America have infested South Florida’s neighborhoods, either as released or escaped pets.
The wildlife commission said sales bans are unlikely to work for species that have already become established, but may be effective before that happens.