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VIDEO"DROP THE IGUANA!!!" That was the angry park ranger in this video ordering The Iguana Man to BREAK THE LAW and release an invasive species iguana back into the wild here in notorious Broward County Florida. Check out the really bad attitude of this park ranger who seems to have some authority issues going on. Oh, and also a complete lack of people skills. My recommendation is that whatever park department this park ranger belongs to provide retraining for him in the form of perhaps The Iguana Man himself teaching this park ranger how to humanely capture and dispose of...

A young girl in Oklahoma said she snagged a “weird” catch over the weekend, reeling in a fish bearing “human-like” teeth. Kennedy Smith, 11, was on a fishing trip at Fort Cobb Lake with her grandparents and brother on Sunday and got “really excited” when she hooked the fish on her line, she told The Associated Press. But to Smith’s surprise, her grandmother was bitten by the animal while she was trying to take out the hook. "I was confused because I knew that fish with teeth are not normal. It was weird," Smith told the outlet. "They were human-like...

Iguanas are an invasive species in Florida and experts have seen an increase in population over the last several years. Whether it's to help with population control, or if people just find them down right tasty, reports have been popping up across the state about people eating iguanas. South Florida resident Brittany Peters is one of those people. "I like to promote eating what you harvest and know a lot of people kill iguanas since they are a nuisance, and I wanted to cook and eat them hoping to encourage those who kill them to also eat them," she told...

South Florida’s not quite Jurassic Park, but it’s getting close. Packs of green iguanas are swarming seawalls, roaming yards and parks, and leaving a path of destruction and filth in their wake. Like a shot of espresso, the hot summer sun has stoked activity in the cold-blooded creatures, which experts say may be at record numbers. “This year is the most iguanas I’ve seen and I’ve been in business for nine years,” says Thomas Portuallo, owner of Fort Lauderdale-based Iguana Control. He says the invasive lizards are out of control with “many hundreds of thousands” creeping around Broward, Miami-Dade and...

The ex-CIA software engineer suspected of leaking a massive, highly secret trove of U.S. hacking tools and source code to WikiLeaks has been charged in federal court with a series of Espionage Act violations. Joshua Schulte, 29, allegedly disclosed thousands of top-secret files outlining the extent of the CIA’s cyberwarfare capabilities in an unprecedented breach that triggered an intensive investigation even before WikiLeaks published the information in March 2017.

Some people in Britain hate grey squirrels enough to devour them. With the UK’s biggest purveyor of fried chicken in crisis, perhaps we should be cooking up our furry feral friendsne cold Sunday morning last month, I visited Pow Hill, a glorious moorland thick with pine trees that overlooks the Derwent reservoir, north-west of Durham. In a clearing, three amateur wildlife photographers, in full camouflage gear, sat on plastic bags and watched a red squirrel race across the bracken. As I watched the little fella leap from log to tree, the sunlight dancing across its tail, naturally my thoughts turned...

Decades ago, Lake Michigan teemed with nutrients and green algae, casting a brownish-green hue that resembled the mouth of an inland river rather than a vast, open-water lake. Back then, the lake’s swampy complexion was less than inviting to swimmers and kayakers, but it supported a robust fishing industry as several commercial companies trawled for perch, and sport fishermen cast their lines for trout. But in the past 20 years, Lake Michigan has undergone a dramatic transformation. In analyzing satellite images between 1998 and 2012, researchers at the Michigan Tech Research Institute were surprised to find that lakes Michigan and...

A huge hog weighing in at a reported 416-pounds was shot in East Texas. “Mr. Joe Clowers shared pics of his food plot nightmare that ended late Saturday night,” Gregg County Game Warden posted to Facebook. Texas Parks and Wildlife estimates that there are more than 1.5 million feral hogs in Texas. There seem to be very few inhibiting factors to curtail this population growth, according to TPWD.gov. Clowers told Chron.com the hog preyed on the fawns in the area and Clowers added that he always stayed armed when visiting his deer feeders in case the hog in question charged...

CHICAGO – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) released the following statement after the discovery of an adult Silver Carp near the T.J. O’Brien Lock and Dam in the Calumet River:“I’m deeply concerned by today’s announcement that an adult Silver Carp was discovered a mere nine miles from Lake Michigan.  If this invasive species reaches the Great Lakes, it could cause significant economic losses and irreversible damage to the ecosystem, and threaten the drinking water of 30 million Americans.  Now more than ever, we must redouble our efforts to prevent their spread by ensuring strong federal funding for the Great Lakes...

Invasive Species, Biological Control, Where do Potatoes come from? Yours truly has a preference for spuds over rice as the dietary “carb.” So, you may forgive me for being interested in news about this tuber-kind being potentially feeding the future colonists on planet Mars. Surely now, our venerable Canadian Broadcasting Service (CBC) would not lie! As the report says “The [potato growing] experiment was conducted in soil in the Atacama Desert in Peru, which is most similar to what is found on Mars.”

Australia has a serious cat problem, with feral cats covering 99.8% of the country according to new research published in the journal Biological Conservation. The exact number of cats fluctuates from roughly 1.4 million after continent-wide droughts cramp food sources to about 5.6 million after extensive wet periods, which result in plenty of available prey. An additional 700,000 feral cats are estimated to live in other environments, including Australia’s urban areas, rubbish dumps and intensive farms. Despite this, researchers say that the cats’ impact on Australia’s fauna is still severe, and that reducing this impact is of critical importance. The...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Step aside, Burmese python — you may no longer be Florida's scariest invasive species. Researchers have confirmed that three Nile crocodiles were captured near Miami, and they say it's possible more of the man-eating reptiles are still out there, although no one can say for sure. The big question now: How did they get to Florida? "They didn't swim from Africa," University of Florida herpetologist Kenneth Krysko said. "But we really don't know how they got into the wild."

The speckled body of the Nile monitor lizard can reach up to 2 meters in length. At one end is a powerful tail that propels the animal through water and whips attackers with surprising force. At the other is a sinuous head that will devour rodents, birds, fish, crocodile eggs, and pretty much anything else within range of its fearsome, recurved teeth. The monitor isn’t fussy. It’s a formidable animal, and the largest lizard in Africa. It’s also the largest lizard in Florida. No one knows exactly when the monitor arrived in Florida, but it was first spotted in 1990....

The giant African land snail is causing problems for Floridians. Wikimedia Commons/Sonel.SA ========================================================================================================================= Florida plant detectives are on the trail of a slippery foe, an invasive African land snail that is wily, potentially infectious, and can grow as big as a tennis shoe. Play Video 8 Animals That Can Regrow Their Body Parts While humans are working on robotic arms and new limb technology, some animals can regrow their limbs on their own. How do they do this? DCI In the four years since Giant African Snails were discovered in Miami, they have slowly but surely spread to new territory,...

Water hyacinth in Africa, Zebra mussels in Lake Erie, Estuary of the San Francisco Bay For a long time, veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce thought in stark terms about invasive species: they were evil interlopers spoiling pristine ‘natural’ ecosystems. Most conservationists and environmentalists share this view. But what if the traditional view of ecology is wrong—what if true environmentalists should be applauding the invaders? Fred Pearce acknowledges that there are horror stories about alien species disrupting ecosystems but most of the time the tens of thousands of introduced species usually swiftly die out or settle down and become model eco-citizens....

I'm writing on a story I heard about the spread of the Burmese python in Florida. This is also my first post on this site. Despite all our objections against the dangers of blind and excessive "green" regulations by the federal government, conservationism SHOULD NOT be seen as a strictly progressive movement. In the context of invasive species, these types of pests infest an area the size of Delaware every year in this country (according to the Audubon Society). Pythons roam the Everglades. Chinese privet chokes out vital understory species in the Southern uplands. Zebra mussels crust the surface of...

CORAL GABLES (CBS4) – They’re back. Giant African land snails which once took a decade to eradicate from South Florida have returned. Giant African land snails, considered to be one of the most damaging snails in the world, have been found in the Coral Gables area of Miami-Dade County, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The Giant African land snail is one of the most damaging snails in the world because they consume at least 500 different types of plants, can cause structural damage to plaster and stucco on houses, and can carry a parasitic worm...

MIAMI, - Authorities in Florida said they are investigating the alleged illegal importing of giant African snails for use in a religious healing ritual. A search warrant filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court said state and federal investigators raided the home of Charles Stewart, 48, in January after receiving information that he was keeping a large box full of the snails, which are only allowed in the United States with special permits for scientific research, the Miami Herald reported Thursday. Federal authorities said they began investigating Stewart in November after receiving complaints that he was feeding the juices from the snails...

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — A breed of giant, ravenous snails that first appeared in Barbados five years ago has thrived on the tropical island, destroying crops and prompting calls for the government to eliminate the slimy pests. A nocturnal "snail hunt" last weekend reported finding hundreds of thousands of giant African snails swarming the central parish of St. George, the country's agricultural heartland, where farmers had complained of damage to crops including sugar cane, bananas and papayas. "We saw snails riding on each other's backs and moving in clusters," said David Walrond, chairman of the local emergency response office, which organized...

Since they arrived in the Great Lakes in the 1980s, two species of mussels the size of pistachios have spread to hundreds of lakes and rivers in 34 states and have done vast economic and ecological damage. These silent invaders, the quagga and zebra mussels, have disrupted ecosystems by devouring phytoplankton, the foundation of the aquatic food web, and have clogged the water intakes and pipes of cities and towns, power plants, factories and even irrigated golf courses. Now the mussels may have met their match: Daniel P. Molloy, an emeritus biologist at the New York State Museum in Albany...