60-68-CAYMAN BRAC-V7 - Cayman Islands

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Mr. Frederic J. Burton
“HERE BE DRAGONS” – GRAND CAYMAN’S UNIQUE BLUE IGUANA
Written by: Mr. Frederic J. Burton, MBE, Director, Blue Iguana Recovery Programme
Endangered species stories are often full of doom and gloom, but here in Grand Cayman the red eyes of an
enormous blue lizard don’t speak bad news at all. Not nowadays, anyway – the Grand Cayman Blue Iguana’s
numbers in the wild have risen from barely a dozen in 2002, to around two hundred and fifty today.
The first time I saw one of these magnificent creatures I thought I must be dreaming. Four-to-five foot
long blue vegetarian lizards sound more like fantasies from ancient maps – “here be dragons” –
but they turn out to be as real as they are vulnerable, and in urgent need of our help. Grand Cayman
is their only natural home, and this was the Kingdom of the Blue Dragons before we faced them with
our dogs, cats and fast cars.
Our Blue Iguana Recovery Programme is stepping up to the challenge, and now if you drop by the
Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park on Grand Cayman, you can actually see Blue Iguanas roaming free on
the trails, and even take a tour behind the scenes at our internationally acclaimed captive breeding
facility. A few miles away in the inaccessible, rocky interior of the island, we release two-year-old
Blue Iguanas, bred at the captive facility, into a nature reserve each December. Numbers are climbing,
and the older iguanas have started to breed in the wild. Just so long as we can protect enough of
their wild habitat, our unique Grand Cayman Blue Iguanas have their future again.