Dead or alive: can bounty plan solve Miami Beach’s invasive iguana problem?
Acity commissioner in Miami Beach is proposing a novel solution to tackle an invasion of non-native iguanas overwhelming the popular tourist city: paying a bounty for the head of each reptile brought in dead or alive.
Commissioners have agreed to look into the iguana problem and the suggestion by council member Kristen Rosen Gonzalez to offer payments to hunters, which she says would offer an incentive for locals to take an active role.
At a commission meeting last week, she questioned if a recent quadrupling of the city’s iguana removal budget to $200,000 paid to professional trapping companies offered value to taxpayers.
“I don’t know, dead or alive. But if we pay per iguana we’re going to get more iguanas,” she said, according to Miami’s Local 10 News.
“People are going to go out and hunt them for money. I think that’s a better use of our money.”
Green iguanas, also known as American iguanas, are native from Brazil to Mexico, and first appeared in the wild in south Florida in the 1960s after some that were kept as exotic pets were released when they got too big.
Their numbers have grown steadily as the species, which thrives in Florida’s subtropical climate, spread north through the state.
Cities such as Miami Beach that once saw little to no non-native reptile activity have been overwhelmed by the proliferation of the large, spiny lizards that damage buildings by digging burrows underneath, devastate plants and landscaping, and defecate at will.
Though predominantly herbivores, iguanas have also been known to eat snails and small bird eggs.
The city of Miami Beach attempted to get a handle on the problem two years ago by hiring a private removal company to patrol parks and public spaces. More than 200 were removed, but one problem was the trappers were limited to a smaller number of areas, and iguana numbers continued to grow.
In one well-publicized incident, an iguana estimated at 5ft (1.5 metres) long was spotted strolling along Lincoln Road, one of the city’s major thoroughfares, while earlier this year in Hollywood, a city barely 20 miles north, a woman was surprised to enter her bathroom and find a similar-sized reptile sitting in her toilet.
“[They] come down from the vent pipe in the roof. Even if your vent pipe is closed, that doesn’t mean your neighbors’ is,” trapper George Cera said at the time.
The Florida state fish and wildlife commission (FWC) acknowledges iguanas are a growing problem, but has run into its own troubles. A pilot program declaring open season on iguanas had to be tempered shortly after it began in 2019 following reports of cruelty, and another incident in which a pool attendant in Boca Raton was shot by teenagers attempting to make some extra cash.
The FWC released a statement clarifying that iguanas could only be removed or killed humanely.
In another attempt to curb numbers, the FWC ruled in 2021 that iguanas would be among 16 of the most destructive non-native species subject to a breeding and dealing ban.
Florida’s other invasive species headaches include python problems in the Everglades and an overabundance of Atlantic Ocean lionfish.
Whether Rosen Gonzalez’s proposal for iguana bounties ever sees the light of day remains to be seen. The Miami Beach commission is setting up an ad hoc committee to look at the issue but has not set a date for reporting back.