I see that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is scheduled to consider the classification of an exotic lizard called the Green Iguana when it meets next week in Weston.
Theses lizards are already established in South Florida. If you visit city parks and some state parks , you’re bound to see them from time to time. They’re all someone’s former pet or its descendants.
The question before FWC is whether to continue to allow people to have pets like this. So far, the staff consensus is to let things slide for the moment since iguanas aren’t attacking children or anything.
What they have been doing is eating nickerbean blossoms at Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys and elsewhere. That’s where an endangered species of butterfly called the Miami blue lays its eggs. No one has seen a Miami blue in the park since January. which is significant because there’s hardly any other place in Florida where these once-c0mmon butterflies survive.
FWC has discounted the iguanaas’ role in the disappearance of Miami blues as an isolated occurrence and nothing worth getting upset about enough to change captive-wildlife the rules..
Butterfly enthusiats have been less sanguine.
In the current issue of American Butterflies magazine there’s an article titled “Who Killed All the Miami Blues?” by Dennis Ollie , president of the Miami Blue chapter of the North American Butterfly Association.
Ollie faults state wildlife officials, park managers and others for letting one of the few remaining formally stable populations of this species disappear from Bahia Honda State Park.
The only other known colony is on Boca Grande Key in the National Keys Wildlife Refuge off Key West. NABA officials wrote in August that iguanas have been found in the refuge and more could turn up, possibly as a result of releases by boaters visiting the area.
The real solution is to get more protection for the Miami blue butterfly by having it federally protected. . The iguanas are one of a number of factors that have affected the butterflies. Weather has played a part, too.
There’s nothing FWC can do about the weather. Iguanas are a different story.