After traveling 1,800 miles from Mexico to Sterling Heights, an immigrant iguana is staying in Michigan for good.
Earlier this month, the rare reptile was moved from the Sterling Heights Nature Center to the Detroit Zoo — only this time, the reptile didn’t have to travel in the cargo hold of a truck.
Workers at Ford Motor Co.’s Van Dyke Transmission Plant discovered the Yucatan spiny-tailed iguana July 29.
“We ship parts to Hermosillo, Mexico, so the only thing we can think of is that he hitched a ride on one of our return trucks,” said Steve Romero, a health and safety representative for the United Auto Workers, which represents workers at the plant.
But Romero noted that Hermosillo is hundreds of miles from Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the iguana’s only habitat.
The creature is being quarantined before joining the zoo’s iguana exhibit.
“This is not the type of reptile that is normally seen in zoos,” said Jeff Jundt, the Detroit Zoo’s curator of reptiles. “I’m not sure if there is another one in a zoo in the U.S.”
A 2004 assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature found a few thousand of the species in the world, exclusively in the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern Mexico. The assessment concluded that declining habitat quality and the illegal pet trade would kill off about 30 percent of the remaining spiny-tailed iguanas by 2014.
Jundt said the iguana has passed preliminary health screenings and will share space with the zoo’s black iguana.
“In the wild, it lives in the same region as the black iguana,” Jundt said. “It’s kind of a unique rescue situation.”
After the iguana was spotted scampering across the floor of the Ford plant, Romero was called in. He found the reptile under a storage dock and called animal control.
While its exact route remains a mystery, zoo officials said they’re pleased the rare iguana ended its international hitchhike in Metro Detroit.
“We’re glad to have him here,” Jundt said.