TX Press:Here today, but iguana tomorrow?

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Posted by desiree on August 09, 2002 at 10:31:34:

Here today, but iguana tomorrow?
08/08/2002

By JACQUIELYNN FLOYD / The Dallas Morning News

FORT WORTH � Rick Hudson, a very nice guy with reptiles on the brain, was a little disturbed that his SOS about the plight of the Grand Cayman blue iguana didn't bring a stampede of reporters clamoring for a news conference. How can the world turn a deaf ear to a lizard in desperate trouble?

Well, the world can be a cold and indifferent place, especially when you're trying to get some public attention for an animal that strikes out in the popularity polls. Unlike, say, a koala bear, the iguana isn't cute and furry; unlike an elephant or tiger, it isn't especially majestic; unlike an eagle, it isn't stirringly symbolic.

But Rick is desperate. He's a conservation biologist at the Fort Worth Zoo and an executive for the Fort Worth-based International Iguana Foundation (I had no idea it was right here in Texas � the city ought to put up a billboard or something).

Grand Cayman's blue iguana is close to extinction.

Here today, but iguana tomorrow?
There aren't any live specimens to show off � the nearest blue iguana is at a zoo in Brownsville � so Rick sent me some photos to look over. They included different poses, profiles and headshots, but all showed a big blue lizard with demonic red eyes and a spiny ridge of stegosaurus spikes running the length of its body. I called Rick back.

"It looks scary," I said. He was dismayed.

"Listen, of all the iguana species, this one just has massive public appeal," he said, leading me to wonder how appealing the public finds the rest of iguana world. "And the situation is absolutely dire."

It's pretty dire, all right. The blue iguana is so close to extinction that if it doesn't get some help pretty quick, it's going to be a footnote in old zoological texts.

It's native to Grand Cayman, a bad piece of biological luck for the blue iguana because the Caribbean island is developing rapidly. There aren't any remote mountainous areas where a threatened species can retreat and regenerate.

They can reach age 50 and grow to 5 feet long, but few make it that long. They get eaten by predators, household pets and mongooses, which were introduced to the Caribbean in hopes of controlling snakes. They get run over while basking on the new, enticingly warm asphalt roadways. They used to be casually killed by people who saw them and said, "Yuck, a lizard," but now they're so scarce they're rarely seen.

"I got a glimpse of one in the wild once, several years ago," Rick said dreamily, drifting for a minute on the memory of that brief, distant sighting.

Their population in the wild is estimated at no more than 25 and maybe as few as 10; there are only 90 or so in captivity.

So I told Rick I would share the plight of the blue iguana, even though it still gave me a little shiver of alien-species revulsion. After all, I agree wholeheartedly with Rick's contention that when a species goes extinct, our world is permanently the worse for it.

But a funny thing happened when I went back to look at iguana photos. The longer I looked, the more appealing they became, with their ancient, wary features and their exotic turquoise-and-onyx coloring.

I found myself drifting away a little bit while sitting at my desk or pushing a grocery cart or driving.

I imagined the huge lizard crashing through the Caribbean bush or sunning itself on a rock, its hue deepening from blue-gray to a gorgeous cobalt as it warms up.

I was hooked. I was dreaming about blue iguanas.

Rick and a consortium of fellow iguana scientists want to launch a public campaign on several fronts: public education to protect them on Grand Cayman; relocation of some animals to neighboring islands; intensified captive breeding programs.

One particular incentive to help the blue iguana might be that, with lizards, your conservation dollar goes an awfully long way. The International Iguana Foundation (I wish they had T-shirts) is credited with saving the Jamaican brown iguana a few years ago on a thrifty budget of $150,000 or so. That's a fraction of the millions it costs to protect elephants or tigers or giant pandas.

To help, you can contact Rick Hudson in Fort Worth, 817-759-7177. Or you can visit www.Cyclura.com ("Cyclura" is the scientific name for the order that includes iguanas and other lizards). The site has photos and lots of handy iguana-related merchandise, proceeds of which benefit conservation.

You might get a shiver. But you might also, as I did, have beautiful blue iguana dreams.

Here today, but iguana tomorrow?

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