Saving Mexico's last dinosaur...

If you have the feeling while lazing under a palm tree that you're not alone chances are you're right. The tropical zone blanketing Colima and Jalisco are home to what might be considered the dinosaur's last remaining relative: the green iguana.

The green iguana is found from Sinaloa, Mexico to tropical South America, normally at lower altitudes where temperatures are warm enough for their cold-blooded bodies. With their sharp claws for climbing these iguanas normally live in trees, high up in the forest canopy where they have access to ample food and sunlight. They are herbivores as adults and eat leaves, soft fruit, plant shoots and flowers – a favorite snack is the red hibiscus. Juvenile green iguanas have a higher protein requirement the adults and supplement their diet with spiders and other insects.

Green iguanas in the wild come down from the trees mostly only to lay their eggs though they like to live near water and are good swimmers. The reproduction cycle here begins in January and about 65 days after mating the female will lay from 10 to 70 eggs in a burrow 45 cm to one meter in depth. The eggs incubate for 90 to 120 days and, while the female may return to the nest site during the incubation, she does not remain to guard it.

The mortality risk for green iguanas, which reach maturity at two or three years of age and can grow up to six feet long, is highest in their first year of life, when natural predators abound. For those that survive infancy, the main predators for adult iguanas are humans.

There are seven species of black iguanas, also knows as spiny tailed iguanas, listed on the Mexican National Institute of Ecology’s official list of species at risk. However, due to many factors such as destruction of habitat, indiscriminate hunting for the meat and the skin and traffic in iguanas for sale as pets both for the export market and here in Mexico, all of the species of iguanas in Mexico including the green iguana (Iguana iguana) are in some danger of extinction.

The iguana is to some level a protected animal in the States of Colima and Jalisco but this is not true of all states in Mexico. While there is no active program in place for iguana conservation in the Costalegre, an iguanario at the Ecological Center of Cuyutlán about 45 minutes south of Manzanillo allows the study of green iguanas and raises them in captivity. Dr. Maria Cruz Rivera Rodriguez of the center says future plans include a program to breed the green iguana in captivity and as they do with the sea turtle hatchery now, re-introduce the species to the wild. However, at this point captive-born green iguanas remain in the center. Since opening in 1992 the center has aided in conservation through education, receiving some 22,000 visitors each year, about half of them school children through a program run in cooperation with the Secretary of Education.

What can the rest of us do to protect iguanas? Don’t purchase iguanas for pets or buy products such as belts, boots or wallets made from iguana skins. Always respect the iguana in his natural habitat and encourage others to do the same.

Ecological Center of Cuyutlán
Pay a visit to the Ecological Center of Cuyutlán. The admittance fee goes to support the Center and will help save more at risk animals.
The Center is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9 am to 5 pm.
Cuyutlán is a beach town 15 km south of Manzanillo along the Highway 200, and also know as the Pacific Black Pearl for its fine dark sand.