Green Iguana Conservation Project, San Ignacio, Belize

It now cost Bz$18 dollars for adults, you will have a guide that explains everything and helps with you and the iguanas. This project is housed within the San Ignacio Resort Hotel grounds, where the work to breed and raise the endangered green iguanas is done, before releasing them into the wild. This project is self-sustaining through the fees charged to visitors. It is an interactive exhibit so come prepared to touch, hold and feed the iguanas. You can also sponsor and name one of the dragon like reptiles (www.sanignaciobelize.com). 

 

The green female iguana lays 30 to 90 eggs at a time. They mate once a year (Nov through Jan); females carry the eggs for 60 days, and then lay them, 90 days later they hatch. Once they are laid in the ground then they are left unattended. Temperature controls the sex of the eggs; 85 degrees gives you females. This project is only producing females at this time do to the severely depleted iguana population in Belize. 

These iguanas are then released onto the hotels back protected property to get used to being in the wild and then migrate off on their own. 

Iguanas have been eaten by Belizeans here and if the female is full of eggs they are eaten too (these eggs are thought to be like Viagra and to help with male fertility, but not true), but only animals eat the eggs once they have been laid. 

 

 

Green iguanas grow about one foot per year. The males have the taller spikes on their backs and change color to bright orange and red during mating season. Males can get up to 6 feet long and female only get to three feet long. The green iguanas will live for 35 years or so. Green iguanas are vegetarian whereas the black ones are carnivores or scavengers and they will eat the baby green iguanas.