DECR Reminds Tour Guides and Public Against Feeding Rock Iguanas

PRESS RELEASE

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT

AND COASTAL RESOURCES

 Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands, 22^nd October 2024 – The Department of Environment and Coastal Resources (DECR) observed a sadly predictable danger to our endemic Turks and Caicos Islands rock iguanas on National Heritage Day 2024.  On Monday 14 October 2024, a group of herpetologists led by DECR encountered a rock iguana with a bamboo skewer puncturing his body from the outside in. This puncture is the result of the iguana swallowing a bamboo skewer used in illegal feeding of fruit to rock iguanas on Little Water Cay.

Feeding iguanas constitutes harming wildlife under the National Parks Ordinance and is therefore illegal. Wildlife interactions both inside and outside of Protected Areas should be observation only. Feeding rock iguanas harms them in several ways including:

• Fruit and other human foods are too high in sugar for their digestive systems – populations of iguanas fed with supermarket fruit in the Bahamas have shown to be diabetic, threatening their health and reproductive abilities.
• Feeding interrupts normal iguana territories, causing increased stress hormone levels, aggression, and competitive injuries.
• Feeding causes ingestion of dangerous materials, including sand stuck to wet food, skewers used in hand feeding, and other items mistaken for food on the ground.
• Uneaten food attracts and sustains rats, which eat iguana eggs and young iguanas.

Several years ago, DECR officers performed a guided necropsy with San Diego Zoo on an apparently healthy adult rock iguana from an area where illegal feeding was occurring. Its lower intestines were impacted with sand 10 cm (4 inches) along their length, leading to the iguana’s death. Supermarket fruit seeds (grape, strawberry) were found within the sand impaction.

Feeding iguanas in the Bahamas has shown to be harmful, and several iguanas that swallowed fruit skewers and suffered puncture wounds from them have been documented. DECR issued warnings then against feeding iguanas then to try to prevent this problem here, but the practice has begun in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

On National Heritage Day, the team attempted to capture the iguana with the puncture wound to have it examined and treated, but was unable to do so. DECR only intervenes in wildlife injury caused directly by human activity, which this incident was.

Turks and Caicos rock iguanas are endemic to the Turks and Caicos and found nowhere else on Earth. It is our collective responsibility to serve as stewards for these animals which are vital to tourism in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Do not feed the iguanas.