© Wilfredo Lee/Associated PressIn this Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017 photo, trapper Brian Wood holds an iguana he caught behind a condominium in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. Wood primarily hunts alligators and tans their skins for luxury leather goods, but he's received so many calls from homeowners seeking help with iguanas in the last several years that he created a pest control business called Iguana Catchers.
Native to Central and South America, green iguanas that escaped or were dumped as pets have been breeding in the Miami suburbs and the Keys for at least a decade without making headlines like other voracious invasive reptiles such as Burmese pythons or black-and-white tegu lizards.
They've been considered mostly harmless because they eat plants instead of native animals. But their burrows undermine seawalls, sidewalks and levees, and they eat their way through valuable landscaping as well as native plants. Their droppings can be a significant cleanup problem, as well as a potential source of salmonella bacteria, which causes food poisoning.
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