AR-News: (US) UT Professor Aims To Lift Lizard Plague

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

By GARY HABER , The Tampa  Tribune
Tampa Bay Online

 
Jun 28, 2004 - TAMPA - Todd Campbell has an easier  goal than St. Patrick. 
He doesn't want to drive the snakes from Ireland. The  University of Tampa 
assistant professor of ecology just wants to eradicate the  Nile monitor lizard 
from Cape Coral. 
This southwest Florida city of 102,000 people is overrun  with the nasty, 
tail-whipping creatures from sub-Saharan Africa. 
Campbell has $50,000 in grants from the National Fish and  Wildlife 
Foundation and the Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program to  capture, study and 
destroy the lizards, which can grow aslong as 7 feet and  feast on a variety of 
prey including birds and gopher tortoise eggs. 
The lizards were first spotted in Cape Coral in 1990.  Campbell estimates 
there may be as many as 1,000 of them around. 
``These things are running around in people's yards,'' he  says. 
No one knows for sure how the lizards, which are not  native to the United 
States, wound up in southwest Florida. Campbell speculates  the first lizards 
may have been abandoned pets, or theycould have been  introduced by pet traders 
who dumped them in the area, hoping to start a colony  that could be harvested 
later and sold. 
One thing is for sure, the lizards took to Cape Coral, a  waterfront city 
with a 400-mile-long network of canals.

 
full  story:
_http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5312223/_ (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5312223/)   




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If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot  prevent us and because we are 
backing our own side in the struggle for  existence, it is only logical to 
cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or  capitalists for the same reasons. 
--C. S. Lewis (novelist and essayist)  
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