Fed up with iguanas occupying county parks, Miami-Dade wants to hire some reptile trappers to capture and kill the invasive intruders.
Miami-Dade’s contracting arm posted draft solicitation documents earlier this month for planned “iguana control services” that an internal memo said could be worth a combined $700,000 a year. The county wants private companies to set traps in parks with large iguana populations, then dispose of the reptiles humanely.
“The shooting of iguanas, pellet gun or otherwise, is strictly prohibited,” reads the draft solicitation, posted Nov. 16. “Euthanasia of iguanas must be conducted off-site in a safe and careful manner.”
Native to Central America and some Caribbean islands, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says green iguanas made their way to the Miami area in the 1960s and established themselves as unwelcome arrivals in the decades that followed.
There are infrastructure complaints, with iguanas damaging seawalls and roadways with burrowing. There are nuisance complaints, with iguanas climbing into gutters and plopping into swimming pools. And there are complaints about iguanas leaving big messes.
‘A tremendous’ mess
“They produce a tremendous amount of feces,” said Ron Magill, communications director at Zoo Miami, one of the iguana hot spots identified in county correspondence about the pending solicitation. “Every week I’ll get someone who sends me a photo of a big pile of feces. I’ll say: ‘That’s from an iguana.’ They’ll say: ‘Oh, my God, that’s bigger than from my dog.’ “
In an email, a Parks administrator emphasized Miami-Dade was following the lead of Fish and Wildlife commission in seeking the humane removal of iguanas.
“Just as in the case of the Burmese Python, the invasive iguana, non-native to Florida, is wreaking havoc on Florida’s native wildlife and natural environment, and Parks seeks to humanely remove them due to that impact,” said Maria Padron, a special projects administrator at Parks.
With residents complaining, iguanas are increasingly in the cross hairs of local governments. In Coral Gables, Mayor Vince Lago said the city is considering how to humanely remove the reptiles.
“This is becoming a real problem” Lago said at the City Commission meeting earlier this month.
Key Biscayne already has iguana trappers on contract for its village parks. But Mayor Joe Rasco said unchecked populations in larger parks in Key Biscayne — Florida’s Bill Baggs and Miami-Dade’s Crandon — make it an uphill task to keep iguanas at bay.
