"You poop on the boat, you eat the garden, and I'll wreck the wall."
Florida has long had a big problem with introduced exotic species like the Burmese python
, which can grow up to 23 feet long and has wreaked havoc on native wildlife
. But in many ways lizards are even worse, accounting for 77 percent of the non-native reptile and amphibians species that have set up breeding populations in the state, according to a study published this month
in the journal Zootaxa. Green and Mexican spiny-tailed iguanas are a particular nuisance. Besides competing with the 13 local varieties of lizard, they are famous for voraciously eating gardens, damaging boats and other property with their corrosive droppings, and even destroying concrete walls by burrowing beneath them
. The study found that people have introduced 137 foreign species of amphibians and reptiles into the state over the last 137 ...
