SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 25 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Ministry of Ecological Transition, Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands, in collaboration with personnel from the Cabildo de Tenerife, have captured more than 1,500 specimens of the exotic green anole lizard.
The Ministry has recently presented to the Cabildo the results of the work to control the population of this exotic lizard, carried out by technicians from the Biodiversity Service and Gesplan and in which the Institute of Tropical Diseases and Public Health of the Canary Islands has also participated, within within the framework of the collaboration agreement between the University of La Laguna and the Government of the Canary Islands.
The regional councilor responsible for the Area, José Antonio Valbuena, encouraged the population to continue collaborating in the detection of exotic species: “Citizen warnings are essential for the early detection of new outbreaks and the control carried out by the Red Early Warning of the Canary Islands for the Detection and Intervention of Invasive Alien Species (RedExos)”.
For his part, the Deputy Minister for the Fight against Climate Change and Ecological Transition, Miguel Ángel Pérez, explained that the capture data confirms that the work has been carried out at an appropriate time to control an expanding population on the island of Tenerife.
“The proliferation of invasive exotic species in our territory constitutes a serious threat to our endemic fauna,” said the Councilor for Natural Environment Management and Security of the Tenerife Council, Isabel García.
He added that the effort made by administrations to control these species “must be supported with the collaboration of citizens, identifying and notifying the presence of unknown animals in the environment and, of course, not increasing the ownership of exotic pets that may invade our natural spaces”.
Among the conclusions obtained from the control work carried out, it can be deduced that the green anole could not only be harmful to people because it contains pathogens transmissible to humans, but also to Canarian biodiversity, since they are arboreal animals that compete directly for the same resources as birds and perenquenes.
Early detection is essential to stop the expansion of this and other exotic species, since it allows the population to be controlled when it is at the first levels of invasion. For this reason, the Government of the Canary Islands requests citizen collaboration to contact ReDExos through its mobile application, by phone 646 601 457 or by email redexos@gobiernodecanarias.org, where they will be informed of the steps to follow in case of detecting any specimen.
