For invasive reptile hunters in Florida, there’s another predatory lizard on the radar. Nile monitors, native to Africa, are populating parts of the Sunshine State, and they can now be killed year-round without a permit or hunting license.
Mike Kimmel, the Python Cowboy, is known for targeting Florida’s least-wanted invasive species, including Burmese pythons and green iguanas. Kimmel is now also targeting Nile monitors, which he refers to as a “new and upcoming invasive species” in a new YouTube video (above). The footage includes a past clip where he wrangled a roughly six-foot-long Monitor lizard with the help of his dog, Otto.
“A Nile monitor is essentially like a smaller Komodo dragon,” Kimmel says in the video. “It’s a predatory lizard and they don’t mess around. They’re not dumb. They’re more like a python mixed with an iguana. That’s a good way to think of them.”
Kimmel owns Martin County Trapping and Wildlife Rescue, and he focuses his hunting efforts on Florida’s southeast coast. But on the west side of the state, Nile monitors aren’t exactly new. They’ve been trapped in and around Cape Coral in Lee County for around 20 years.
“In that 20-year timeframe, our environmental resources staff has caught several hundred lizards, close to 800 now,” City of Cape Coral environmental biologist Harry Phillips told Outdoor Life in an email. “There are pockets of them, but they are greatly diminished.”
Phillips says Cape Coral hosts the largest population of the striped invasive lizards in the state. The area is also home Florida’s largest population of burrowing owls. At nine inches tall, the burrowing owl is listed as threatened in Florida. They live in burrows and are active during the day. Niles have similar behaviors.
“Nile monitors have a strict carnivorous appetite,” Phillips says. “Having a predator such as the Nile monitor in Florida is a detriment to native species, and a further threat to listed species such as gopher tortoises and burrowing owls.”
Originally added to Florida’s prohibited species list in 2021, Nile monitor lizards are a semi-aquatic species that can survive on land near salt or freshwater. They eat bugs, fish, frogs, young crocodiles, birds and their eggs, as well as small mammals. They’ve also been known to attack small pets and livestock, such as chickens.
Nile monitor lizards are considered “relocated exotics” that have either been released or have escaped from captivity. They can grow up to 6.5 feet long and weigh nearly 20 pounds. They are fast runners that can reach around 18 miles an hour, and they’re strong swimmers, able to hold their breath underwater for roughly an hour. Their ability to survive in various habitats, including mangroves and marshes, has allowed them to expand through Florida’s vast canal infrastructure.
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“South Florida’s extensive canal system may provide dispersal corridors for the species, which tends to inhabit water edges,” states Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in its regulatory status report. “Current efforts by FWC include actively patrolling for and removing Nile monitors from known populations and responding rapidly to sightings of monitor species in new areas.”
FWC encourages the public to report all Nile monitor sightings in the state, either by calling the agency or through an online mapping system.