It’s the months the Bounty Hunters will be riding – MAY thu AUGUST

If you’re a green iguana you’re a wanted iggie and there’s a price on your big head.

WANTED DEAD (no alive here)! Price $2.

To get your Bounty Badge you must be eligible. No upper age limits and you don’t have to know how to ride a horse. Contracts are only open, however to Caymanian adults, permanent residents with the right to work or appropriate Trade and Business Licence holders.

And there is a limit on the number of iggies you kill. In excess of 100. 99 won’t do so you had better find an appropriate app to load on your smart phone if you’re not good at adding up past 10. Otherwise you won’t get your $2 per head. However, anyone interested in culling green iguanas on a smaller scale will be able to participate in the Green Iguana Raffle, where raffle tickets for a twice-monthly cash prize will be issued for every 10 iguanas culled.

“An attempt to involve the community at large with the raffle has the potential to scale up culling operations considerably,” Burton said. He explained it is unlikely the formal cull contractors alone will be able to reach the scale needed to make a real impact on the population growth trajectory.

Contractors cannot participate in the raffle. Raffle registration by email will begin on 26 April, officials said. Raffle cullers will also be held to the same rules as the contractors.

Registration for contractors will be at the Department of Environment, North Sound Road, and will be open from 10am until 7pm. Additional registration days will follow as necessary.

And to check you don’t dump the carcasses of these varmints into the sea the Marshal in charge, Fred Burton, will be appointing a sheriff aka cull manager, who will oversee all the culling being executed over this four month period.

To read the whole story that contains more information than in this editorial see today’s story “Cayman Islands invites green iguana contractor registration”,

Yesterday (18) we carried a story “In South Florida, green iguanas have grown into suburban scourge”.

The story tells of an iggie actually stopping first-round tennis match at this year’s Miami Open by crawling over a scoreboard onto the court. German player Tommy Haas snapped a selfie with it, but his Czech opponent Jiri Vesely complained to the umpire that he couldn’t concentrate. An ATP Tour video shows the umpire telling Vesely, “It’s not a dangerous animal.”

By the numbers mentioned in this story they pale by the problem we have here.

Trapper Brian Wood, however, thinks iguanas are an excellent business opportunity. In the aforementioned story it says he He wants to breed the iguanas he catches to sell hatchlings as pets in northern states with cold winters. In the meantime, he euthanizes them and sells their meat as a delicacy. He’s also trying to generate interest in iguana skins as a sustainable leather source, alongside alligator and python skins available in his Hollywood store.

“They’re like rats, they’re always going to be here,” Wood said. “I think it’s going to be a growing business.”

If you missed the article go to: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/in-south-florida-green-iguanas-have-grown-into-suburban-scourge/

Perhaps some enterprising person here might take up Trapper Brian’s idea. You certainly wouldn’t have the need to breed them yourself here.

Kill the Iggies. They MAY become a bigger bounty than you think.