Honduras This Week Environment: Iguana Farm

Farm helps replenish Honduras' dwindling iguana population

The author and the docile Don Francisco de Iguana -- both confirmed vegetarians -- share an intimate moment. (Photo by Mario Gutierrez Minera)

By W. E. GUTMAN

Special to Honduras This Week

TEGUCIGALPA -- I get off the Regal Voyager in Puerto Cortes and bum a ride to San Pedro Sula with a kindly old couple. No sooner settled into the cramped rear seat than I hear a thrashing sound behind me, accompanied by a low-pitched, otherworldly utterance of pain and rage, a lament so woeful and intense that I spin around, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. Loosely wrapped in an old newspaper, its front and rear legs tied behind its back, a large adult iguana -- almost four feet from head to tail -- agonizes in the stifling heat of the luggage well. Panting, its tongue vainly probing the air for moisture, its eyes are bloodshot and bulging.

"What will you do with it," I ask.

They look at me with incredulity. "Have it for dinner, of course."

"How much did you pay for it?"

"Oh, about ten dollars."

"If I give you twenty, will you let it go?"

Incredulity turns to scorn. "Be serious. Besides, we broke every one of its toes. It would never survive in the wild. Have you ever tasted iguana?"

"I had a pet iguana many years ago. His name was...."

"Well, you ought to try. It's really very good."

"I don't usually eat my friends...."

Once teeming in the "wilds" of Honduras, iguanas are on the endangered species list. Trussed up like salamis, more dead than alive, they are sold on the side of the road by overzealous poachers eager to augment meager incomes to hungry campesinos who have little else to eat, and to well-to-do epicures who indulge the exotic in patriotic support of their less fortunate fellow-citizens.

"I had to do something to prevent -- or at least delay -- their looming extinction," says Dr. Olvin Francisco Andino, a noted biologist and operator of the popular Iguana Farm. Inaugurated in 1993 to protect and replenish the species, and set in a lovely tropical garden less than 15 minutes from downtown Tegucigalpa, the Farm houses over 300 specimens -- among them 85 frisky newborns and juveniles.

Emerald-green at birth and during adolescence, iguanas mature to dappled shades of slate gray and earth brown. The adults are released in fields and forests.

In addition to iguanas, the Farm is home to a number of animals rescued from abuse or abandonment, among them snakes, lizards, possums, hamsters, turtles, birds and a pygmy deer that recently narrowly escaped being dinner to dogs.

Dr. Andino's son, 14-year-old Josue Alejandro Luke, an aspiring biologist, cares for his extended family with skill and manifest affection. His knowledge of zoology is vast and his commentaries are honed to edify and uplift. Ask for him when you visit.

Located in Aldea La Joya, carretera a Los Lianos, the Iguana Farm is open daily except Wednesday.