Our Next Disaster Is Already Here — And It's Scrambling Around in Plain Sight

Walk onto the pickleball courts at the Racquet Club, and you're not just playing a game — you may be picking up Salmonella on your shoes, balls, racquets, and hands. Look along the berms between the Collier Blvd condos and the beach, and you'll find burrows undermining the ground itself. Look up, and you might find one in your attic. Marco Island has a disaster playing out in plain sight, and our City government has not only failed to address it — it has actually turned away help.

I’m talking about the explosion of invasive iguanas across our island, and I believe it's time we treated it like a public health and environmental threat.

Iguanas aren't native to Florida. They arrived in the 1960s through the exotic pet trade and agricultural shipments from Central America, and with no natural predators here, their numbers have grown largely unchecked ever since. On Marco Island, they are now among the fastest-growing lizard populations in the world, with residents reporting animals over five feet long and up to 18 pounds. Every breeding season adds thousands more eggs to our city — far outpacing what our current, limited mitigation efforts can handle.

Iguanas are undermining seawalls, cracking pavers and patios, damaging pool decks and home structures, and infiltrating roofs and attics across the island. They also feed heavily on landscaping and agricultural crops, a growing concern for South Florida's broader agricultural economy as well as our own yards.

Other communities have seen this coming and acted. Miami Beach recently quadrupled its iguana eradication budget, from $50,000 to $200,000, in direct response to mounting infrastructure damage. Puerto Rico is confronting the same crisis at a territorial level, with significant damage to infrastructure and agriculture prompting extensive government intervention.

Marco Island's budget for this problem is zero dollars.

The first responsibility of local government is to protect the health and safety of its residents. On this issue, our City is not meeting that responsibility — and it is running out of time to get ahead of a problem that grows larger, and more expensive, with every breeding season we wait.

I am running for Marco Island City Council to address a number of critical issues Marco Island is facing. This iguana hazard is among the issues. The City should get fully engaged now: dedicating some small funding to professional trapping and removal, coordinating with HOAs, monitoring and remediating shared community spaces, educating residents on the health risks and safe removal practices, and tracking our progress so we know the investment is working. I’m not talking about more city spending of money, but surely we can redirect some small amount to fight a big problem.

Waiting until this becomes an even bigger crisis is not a strategy — it's how we end up paying far more later to solve a problem we could have gotten ahead of today. I am asking my fellow residents to join me in pushing our City to act before that happens.

Dennis Bartolucci is a candidate for Marco Island City Council