The Ministry of Agriculture’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency is raising the bounty for adult green iguanas to NT$300 apiece for certified iguana removers, after more than 260,000 iguanas were removed nationwide last year.
The ministry last year set up a task force to control the invasive species through collaboration between the central and local governments.
Iguana removal operations used to be suspended toward the end of a year with the government financial cycle, said the agency, but iguana mating season usually occurs early each year.
Photo courtesy of Hsieh Chi-liang
Removal efforts were previously discouraged in military areas, treacherous terrain or cross-border areas where responsibility was unclear, the agency said.
The removal was inefficient because it focused only on the numbers of iguanas removed, while the new strategy focuses on removing breeding reptiles, it said. The new plan operates through the mating season, the agency said.
The agency organized dedicated teams to capture iguanas in the aforementioned gray areas, with more than 1,600 people trained by professional iguana removal contractors, it said.
The agricultural damage claim app developed by the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute was employed to observe and
document iguana activity hotspots, increasing culling efficiency, the agency said, adding these tweaks significantly increased effectiveness.
The more than 260,000 iguanas removed nationwide last year was triple the figure from the year before, it said.
Pingtung County topped the list with 130,288 iguanas removed, followed by Kaohsiung’s 62,608 iguanas, it added.
However, up to 84 percent of the captured iguanas were found to be juveniles with a snout-vent length of less than 30cm. The agency retooled the reward system accordingly.
The reward for each adult iguana with a snout-vent length of 30cm or more captured by people who have received iguana removal training and certification would be raised from NT$250 to NT$300 this year, while the reward for capturing a juvenile iguana would be reduced from NT$100 to NT$50, the agency said.
The NT$500 reward for each adult iguana captured by contractors would remain, but the reward for their haul of juveniles would be decreased from NT$200 to NT$100 each, it said.
People are welcome to help capture green iguanas, but only those who have received training and certification from local governments can earn rewards, the agency said, calling on people not to cause unnecessary harm to iguanas in their removal actions.
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