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Vancouver Island faces growing lizard problems
After being released from a private zoo in 1970, common wall lizards are surging on Vancouver Island.
“This is a lizard that shouldn’t be here,” Gavin Hanke, curator of vertebrate zoology at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, tells CTV News. “People shouldn’t be letting their pets go, but this is precisely what happened here.”
The island now has a population of 500,000 to 700,000 of the lizards, which come from central Italy, Hanke said.
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Header Image:
Common wall lizards were released on Vancouver Island in 1970, and their population has surged.
Credit: Will Brown
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