South FL Residents Will See Iguanas Stunned By The Cold Lying Falling To The Ground

SOUTH FLORIDA — With a strong cold front moving through South Florida this weekend, the region will see some of its coldest temperatures in about a decade, the National Weather Service in Miami tweeted early Friday.

Wind chill and freeze watches have been issued for Sunday morning. Temperatures could hit as low as 34 degrees in parts of the region, the agency said. And with the wind chill, it could feel like it’s as low as 25 degrees in some areas.

In South Florida, a forecast like this can only mean one thing: a chance of falling iguanas.

“When it gets this cold like this, it’s funny to those who aren’t from here to see the news people talking about iguanas falling from trees, but … it can and will happen,” said Joe Wasilewski, a conservation biologist with the King Cobra Conservancy and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Iguana Specialist Group.

He added, “If it’s under 40 (degrees), it’s gonna happen. If it’s in the 50s, they’re slow. If it’s in the 40s, they’re on the brink of falling. And if it’s in the 30s, they’re down.”

Green iguanas were introduced to Florida decades ago from Central and South America.

Those are areas “that very rarely dip below 45 or 40 degrees,” said Dermot Bowden, president of the South Florida Herpetological Society. “It just doesn’t happen, so they’re not that cold tolerant. So, the few times the temperatures get that low here, they get what we call cold stunned.”

Usually, that “magic number” is 45 degrees, he said. Any temperature below that, and the iguanas become inactive, meaning they’re more likely to fall from trees and other high places in which they might be sleeping or hiding.

But not to worry — the cold won’t likely kill them, Bowden said. “To people who are new to Florida and aren’t used to seeing large lizards lying down on the ground, they look like they might be dead, but they’re actually not.”

If anyone comes across a cold-stunned iguana, “the best thing to do is just leave them the way they are,” he said. “They will recover.”

Related: FL Weather: Temperatures To Hover At Freezing

Once the temperatures start to rise again, usually when they hit about 50 degrees, the lizards will begin moving again.

During a cold snap in recent years, the South Florida Herpetological Society got a call from a man who was new to South Florida. When he saw the iguanas on the ground, he tried to rescue them by collecting them, putting them in his car with plans to bring them home.

“He started to drive back to his house and turned on the heat in his car. Well, guess what happens? Twenty iguanas wake up and start freaking out. He had no idea. He was just trying to do a good thing,” Bowden said. “He asked us what he should do. We told him, ‘Park the car. Open the doors. Let them out.’”

It’s when the cold snap lasts for more than one day — which doesn’t typically happen in South Florida — that those iguanas might die because of the low temperatures, he said. “If it’s consistently 45 degrees and they can’t really recover from it, they unfortunately succumb to (the cold) and there’s nothing you can do.”

Iguanas Are Invasive Species In FL

Green iguanas are an invasive species in Florida and, starting last year, a new statewide law made it illegal to own them and 15 other nonnative reptiles. Nonnative species can often take over an area when they — such as iguanas — have few predators and breed prolifically.

The invasive spread of green iguanas throughout South Florida “all has to do with the pet trade,” Wasilewski said.

They started arriving in the area in the mid-1960s, and now it’s hard to say how many are living in the wild, he said. “The numbers are incredible. There’s no scientific estimate in South Florida except to say that are very common here.”

Their population has grown significantly since 2010, when “there was a big freeze and the iguanas weren’t as bad as they are now,” he said. “The population really spiked after that freeze … and climate change certainly has a lot to do with it.”

Every year, they tend to migrate a little farther north and east, Wasilewski said. They currently can be found from Southern Martin County all the way down into Monroe County and the Florida Keys.

They’re commonly seen in many Miami-Dade County parks, he added. “They don’t like the Everglades. They like the urban areas.”

Cold Snap A Good Time To Remove Iguanas From Properties

Freezes like the ones expected this weekend are an excellent time to try to control the iguana population, said Blake Wilkins, co-owner of Redline Iguana Removal.

“They’ve been a growing issue in South Florida, and we haven’t had one of these major cold snaps to dent their population in a while,” he said.

Last year, during the few times it dipped into the mid-40s, Wilkins said his company “didn’t get a single call … about any cold, stunned or frozen iguanas.”

He anticipates this weekend’s cold snap will be different because of the wind chill.

“Earlier this week, it was windier and there was nothing crazy, but we did find a few,” he said. “And I think we’re about to see more of that … If you’ve got the wind chill factor like everybody says is coming, then with anything under 45 degrees and cooler we have the potential of seeing falling iguanas.”

Wilkins added, “And they’re not just in trees. They’re in burrows. They’re in roof crevices. They’re everywhere.”

His team removes iguanas from properties throughout Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Broward and parts of Martin counties. They’ve taken as many as 100 of the lizards from a single home.

While they’re not violent, they can cause a lot of problems for homeowners.

“People sometimes don’t understand the damage they can cause,” Wilkins said. “People say, ‘Oh, they’re not harming anybody,’ which is true. They’re not going to attack anybody … but they have really sharp claws. They can dig. They can destroy landscaping. They can tear up roofs.”

He expects Sunday’s cold weather will bring a lot of work for his company. He already has a long list of clients who have asked him to check their properties for stunned iguanas.

“We’re definitely going to hit the places we’ve had trouble getting them out from,” he said. “This cold weather is a chance to try to control them a bit.”