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| Green iguana (Iguana iguana). Photo by Renoir Auguste |
The green iguana (Iguana iguana) is widely distributed (ubiquitous) across Trinidad and Tobago. It can be found in forests as well as in urban gardens and parks. In Trinidad and Tobago they are hunted for their meat. Although the green iguana is perhaps very abundance currently, there have been no targeted efforts to document its distribution and abundance locally. This perhaps may be because of different reasons, with lack of funding being one of them.
During the restrictions enforced by safety precautions for managing covid-19 spread, a call was made in April 2020 by the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists' Club Herpetology Group Leader to Club members and members of the public across urban areas in Trinidad to document green iguanas from their backyard. Persons were reached out mainly using social media. During the very short period, over a hundred iguanas were reported from across urban areas in Trinidad which was published in the international journal Reptiles and Amphibians. This rapid assessment illustrates how citizen science can contribute to ecological data in a short time frame with limited expenses. Hopefully, the data can be used to better manage exploited green iguanas in urban areas in Trinidad, and provide a baseline for future studies on the exploited reptile.
Reference:
Auguste, R.J. 2020. Using citizen science to rapidly determine the distribution of exploited green iguanas (Iguana iguana) across urban Trinidad and Tobago. Reptiles & Amphibians 27(3): 419-421.
Link to paper here:
https://journals.ku.edu/reptilesandamphibians/article/view/14859
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