Iguana cull on track as 300k taken to dump
Large green iguana
(CNS): In the nine-week period since the green iguana cull began at the end of October on Grand Cayman, 302,326 iguanas have been exterminated, which researchers at the Department of Environment believe equates to around a quarter of the population at the time the island-wide cull began. The numbers show that the $5 bounty is keeping cullers engaged, and if the daily average of 5,733 being brought into the counting station at the landfill is sustained, the invasive species will soon be much less common, though that will bring its own challenges.
With the population estimated to now be down to around one million, the space created by the removal of so many iguanas over the last two months gives the remaining population more room to hide. Hunting them will therefore become slightly more difficult for cullers, but it is important that the reduction in numbers prevents a resurgence by the time the green iguanas begin breeding again in the spring,
However, the DoE has stated that it will continue to review the project and ensure that if cullers are working harder to cull fewer iguanas, they are still compensated to ensure they stick with it.
The cull is expected to last all the way through 2019, with the ambitious goal of taking out some 1.4 million green iguanas.
Category: Land Habitat, Science & Nature
And the lionfish? Are we still culling them?
I love the smell of rotting iguana in the morning. It smells of.,,,,(sniff)…Victory! With apologies to Apocalypse Now.
Every time I read these culling articles I feel very sad. Killing animals that didn’t ask to be there & not even killing them for food. Just killing them to kill them. Seems vicious to me. Why not catch them and send them somewhere where they would at least eat them or use the skin? I find this inhumane, wasteful.
I concur
We are humanity.
We transform the environment to live in it and feast on numerous species. We can communicate telepathically like this and kill hostile, edible or invasive species hundreds of metres away with a rifle we invented.
We are alpha.
You’re telling me that you don’t kill rats or mice that’s invaded your house? What about insects? You don’t call pest control for them? All of them are some form of life. Should we sell chocolate covered roaches as a delicacy?
Be reasonable. The iguanas are not native to the environment and have destroyed a lot of the indigenous foliage and creatures. Yes humans do the same. However, it is survival of the fittest and we decide what to do to save ourselves. Including not having pests around.
In Trinidad green iguana meat is a delicacy. They could actually make a profit from the cull. They could export that meat to tnt.
Listen I have roosters that visit me each day at 7:02am. They wake my family and I up, great strong bread roach eating chickens, if u touch any of them its me and you for the final battle. They even eat the left overs before their time of Roost at 9pm yes 9pm late night Fowl. they keep the strangers out also as they Kaka- doodle- do at excessive rates while approached in strange ways. Don’t cull my pets.
7:02 am? Seems awfully precise, and consistent.
Hire them Caymanians, at least they show up on time each day.
Thanks to the Cullers, I now have Neesberries and Custard Apples on my trees..
Thank You-
CHICKEN CHICKEN????? D.O.E. WHAT ABOUT A CHICKEN CULLING? It seems that Cayman residences have become so use to chickens that they don’t realize these wild animals are a MAJOR problem too. Chickens, poo, die and nest everywhere in Cayman and this too is an environmental issue. I’ve been coming to Cayman for over 20 years and have always been bewildered how KFC allows wild chickens to roam freely in front of the DT Store and not do anything to remove them. Tourist snap photos as they think its strange not funny. At any given time at any given supermarket parking lot you may find a chicken eating discarded chicken bones from lunch boxes. I have even witnessed people throwing chicken bones (and other “stuff”) to chickens to eat so they may be entertained.
One pest at a time, okay? Maybe we’ll even get to fat, crooked politicians eventually.
Chickens are far worst pests than iguanas. Chickens year up you yard, gardens, trash and they are full of disease. Nevermind the useless racket They make throughout the night. They should have culled the chickens instead.
That’s a very precise number, isn’t it? 302,326. Some mighty fine iguana hunters on this island, and some mighty fine iguana counters too. Their ability to get the counting so precise is something we should all be proud of.
Let’s imagine, just for one second, that the iguana hunters and the iguana counters have been working diligently every single day of those nine weeks so far, even God forbid, on a Sunday. Nine weeks, seven days a week = 63 days.
Let’s also pretend that the hunters and the counters are working 8 hours a day, every day, non stop with no breaks for patties, lunch or sundowners. Pull out your calculator…
302,326 iguanas divided by 63 days = 4,799 iguanas per day, every day.
4,799 iguanas divided by an 8 hour working day = 600 iguanas every single hour, every single day.
600 iguanas every hour, every day = 10 iguanas every minute of every working hour of every day for the past nine weeks. One every six seconds, non stop for two months.
Really? Even if you really try hard to believe that the cullers are performing that efficiently, who is counting ten iguana carcasses a minute at the dump non stop for two months? There isn’t a constant stream of iguanas being dropped off for eight hours every day, there’s probably a bunch at the end of the working day but nearly 5,000? Who’s counting them to the level of detail being claimed by CIG, Alan Turing?
It’s utter BS. But I bet the $5 a head being paid out is as real as the day is long. I wonder where that’s gone…
Pastor Alfredo
I have provided similar calculations in the past which concluded what the numbers they report are “cooked”. There is absolutely NO WAY they could cull so many iguanas a day/hour.
The whole scheme MUST be audited.
Your math assumes that it’s just one person, but there’s multiple people counting.
They use the clicker counter where you just push the trigger down and it clicks +1 so both parties are aware of the count..
It doesn’t take 6 seconds to throw in a single small iguana when some guys are bringing buckets with like 50 juveniles. It might take a couple seconds for me to get my receipt.
When finished a copy of the receipt with a unique number, the culler ID, date and count is recorded. That count is on the cheque’s attachment.
Your complex algorithm leaves out one important factor, the number of cullers…sure 600 iguanas an hour sounds crazy….but if you have 200 cullers thats only 3 per hour for each of them, which on the other hand doesn’t sound too unreasonable…
My complex algorithm doesn’t ignore anything. I’m simply calculating that two sets of people (of unknown quantity), need to be killing and counting an iguana every six seconds, non stop, eight hours a day, seven days a week for nine weeks to reach this fantasy total. Even if 200 cullers could keep up that kind of kill rate as the numbers of easily attainable iguanas naturally reduces, who is counting 4,900 carcasses a day at the dump? It’s quite clearly BS.
There aren’t 300,000 iguana carcasses at the landfill, I can promise you that.
Pastor Alfredo
Maybe you should go look in the dumpster that the carcasses are placed in when collected…. dumb @55
You’re just angry because you think the sky fairy doesn’t want us to eradicate an invasive species.
Use some critical thinking
Pastor Alfredo – it’s been 2 months since I been culling and i’ve dropped off 6000 myself. It is very accurate.
That’s incredible! Amazing job and well done to the Cullers and DOE! Keep up the good work and (incase you guys haven’t heard it) THANK YOU!
The dump must stink even more now, that is some achievement.
Can we cull the feral chickens next, it should be much easier as they dont live in the swamp and the meat can be sold as local free range chicken at twice the price of supermarket birds thereby covering the cost of the cull.
How about no.. They keep the small insects under control. I like being able to sit in my grass and not really worry too much about something stinging me.
Agreed! They eat centipedes and other creepy crawlies.
The cats are a bigger problem, also edible if cooked right.
Spay and neuter is much easier. Now if the loacal population would start with their cats and dogs the island would be fine.
Leave my guard chickens alone….my dogs keeps robbers away and the chickens keep the scorpions away.
Amma shoot am a loot my way in Shanty Town….
Desmond Decker sang this song and hope we can shoot or cull our way to get rid of all these iguanas that are eating up everything in gardens and fruit trees everywhere.
What happens to the dead iguana carcass once it is taken to the dump?
Does anyone know how they are being disposed of?
When we are done with the iguana cull could we do the idiot cull please? Target of say 1,000 per day?
WestBay gangbangers and various retarded idiots are already participating.
In due time im sure your fantasy world shall crumble like any other idiot that speaks down on a district.
You say that like it’s happened before. It hasn’t.
It seems that west bay is actually on the rise with land prices per square foot exceeding that of BT and matching GT.
The fact is in WB the demand is sky high e.g. not may or even that may for sale signs (take note) and the supply is not high. Its a little strip of land located very close to the tourist and now economic capital of this country.
In real estate, location is everything and in a few short years like South Sound the district of West Bay will be the million dollar plus locale. Of course, just like South Sound there will be no more room for the poor on social services and they will be pushed somewhere else which will become the new West bay
You first, Sir.
You have a stone. Throw it.
Don’t throw one back at my glass house! I’ve almost got this beam of wood out of my eye!
So the 500k+ hatchlings prior to the cull have cancelled that BS number out already.
What a waste of money.
Green Iguanas can lay a clutch of anything between 20-50 eggs in a once yearly synchronised hatching. So if there really are 1 or 2 million greenies, (and this isn’t a cynical money grab or political ruse) on this island and just say 100k, (5-10%) are breeding females laying 20 eggs. And just say 10 of those turn out as viable hatchlings, that’s 1 million new greenies in one season.
Now I know mathematics aren’t a strong subject on Cayman, but why so many thumbs down?
It’s quite simple really, you’ve been conned.
Yep, as expected, still no serious responses to a clear mathematical proposal. Putting thumbs down doesn’t negate the fact that if the numbers of adult greenies are correct, the hatchlings must outweigh the cull.
But then that’s a typical response from those whose only interest is money and not the simple truth.
It is simple math. However, they only sexually mature at 18 months, and breeding season is still some time off. And why the target cull is over a million, not the 300K to date. Now see what happens to the total population if you make no attempt whatsoever to cull. Easy to point out the challenge – but just ignoring it doesn’t solve the problem, and with exponential expansion it gets massively worse very quickly indeed if as you seem to be suggesting we do nothing. Or d you have some superior solution in hand? .
But clearly we are starting with mature females already in situ, not newly hatched greenies waiting 18 months for a good time. Last years breeding season had already finished when the cull began so we can use the figures offered by DOE as a base line to estimate hatchlings.
The numbers given out were in the region of 1-2 million, so viable females would probably be in excess of the example 100k offered.
But then again, are the scaremongering tactics of huge numbers actually correct in the first place, and which proven scientific process was used to establish the estimation offered?
Please don’t tell me it involved a researcher standing in one place and counting those seen in the proximity, because that really would be junk science.
People like you who seek problems rather than solutions, are never happy. This program is seeking solutions. If it doesn’t work out, they will try something different. Invasive green iguanas won’t go away on their own, and it no longer matters who is to blame; what matters is what we — all of us — do about it.
You’re worried about juvenile green igs, get your flashlight and noose and get out there and snap them up. The juveniles aren’t nearly as wary as the adults, and you get the same $5 for them as any other green ig.
I am doing my part, are you?
Nice rant, but if you’re so concerned why didn’t you do it years ago for free?
And it still doesn’t matter what I think, the numbers speak volumes, you are delusional if you think you can stop the green iguana on Cayman.
Pontificating now is too late, you should have got your lazy freeloading asses on the case 10 years ago.
Idiot. You can’t put a noose around a 3 month hatchling. It’s already too late, they are in the bush and you can’t get at them.
Only a fool would think that those taken on the roadside are the problem, there are thousands in the deep bush and wetlands that you will never be able to catch.
You can catch hatchlings with your hands.
Oh good answer, I bet that’ll be fun in the bush at EE. You muppet, the ones you can see and catch easily are the least of the problem.
Muppet? Does that mean awesome iguana snatcher?
You are badly mistaken. Any size green ig can be noosed. The juveniles are less wary, and can often be just grabbed with the hand.
I have noosed many of them. It’s easy.
OF COURSE it’s a big problem, but consider this: What do the green iguanas and people have in common? The green igs mostly eat that which people grow — fruits and vegetables. They require fresh water, like all lizards. Thus, they most often congregate around where people do.
Now, you can throw you hands up and say erma gerrd it’s too haaaard, but I choose to keep fighting the problem, as I’ve been doing for several years, long before there was a paid bounty. Why? Well, son, somebody has to do it. Agree that this should’ve been started MUCH earlier, but that wasn’t my call.
I say it again: Are you doing your part, or just ranting? Really good rant, but action is needed now. Cullers aren’t enough. You clearly see the problem, right? Do something good. Help us out.
would love to see an audit of this whole scheme….
who’s counting the iguanas and how are they being disposed of.?
It is most certainly an elaborate scheme. I asked the same questions few times. Why did they hire accountants to count dead animals? Looks like an overkill? Or they are not accountants, but property managers? It raises even more questions. They don’t appear to manually count anything at the Dump. They, Cornwall consultants, outsource it. They don’t even have website to see what they are up to. Certainly no chartered and licensed accounting skills or expertise is required for this project.
Something is fishy.
Already asked and answered several times.
the questions have not been answered.
1.Justification for hiring Cornwall consultants? Last checked, accountants or property managements skills should be used in an audit or property management, not counting dead iguanas.
2. Math doesn’t add up.
3. Who exactly counts dead iguanas and how much time it takes to count one iguana? Knowing that we could the math to determine if it is possible to manually count $6000 dead animals per day
4. Where and how dead iguanas disposed? Are they being buried? Where and how? Incinerated?
Lastly, just for the kicks, do dead iguana counters wear protective gear, while dealing with dead animals?
Cool them up Cayman style.
*cook
Curried iguana is so good!
hey cullers, entrance to Yacht Drive every afternoon around 1pm, plenty still there
Anonymous 11:11 why didn’t you call DOE or get a phone number for a Culler and let them know about the Iguanas at Yacht Club, instead of posting your comment.
As I drove past the entrance at 1.30 there were three cars there trying to catch them, seems like the info got out, no matter how , so what is your point?.
Sorry Cars can’t catch Iguanas, people can, so what’s your point?
It is not his job to tip DOE on iguanas.
It was just an advice, I’m not saying that the comment would not be noticed, but it would be better to still call a Culler, that’s all I was saying.
Plenty by Discovery Point too.