When we hear the word ‘culling’ it often makes us react almost violently against its use no matter what the reasons are. Especially in biology. Every animal has the right to exist.

So what exactly is “culling”?

According to Wikipedia:

“In biology, culling is the process of segregating organisms from a group according to desired or undesired characteristics. In animal breeding, it is the process of removing or segregating animals from a breeding stock based on specific trait. This is done to exaggerate desirable characteristics, or to remove undesirable characteristics by altering the genetic diversity of the population. For livestock and wildlife, culling often refers to the act of killing removed animals.”

“The word comes from the Latin colligere, which means “to collect”. The term can be applied broadly to mean sorting a collection into two groups: one that will be kept and one that will be rejected. The cull is the set of items rejected during the selection process. The culling process is repeated until the selected group is of proper size and consistency desired.”

Here in the Cayman Islands we have at present two culls that seem to go against the aversion to wiping out animals. One is the culling of the invasive lionfish and the other is the even more invasive green iguanas.

Both these animals were brought here and are not indigenous to our islands. In fact they are wiping out our indigenous species.

Between the beginning of the green iguana cull last October and the end of last week nearly 739,000 greens iguanas have been removed from Grand Cayman by by our licensed brigade of cullers.

They even removed two huge ones from my garden here in Newlands!

Thank you.

It hasn’t been an easy job as the iguanas are not stupid. They went into hiding but it is now the breeding season and these beasts , especially the males,have to appear to “get their rocks off”.

Last week almost 30,000 iguanas were killed. This was the largest weekly cull number this year.

According to Fred Burton, the head of the DoE Terrestrial Research Unit, female iguanas can lay dozens of eggs at a time!

Has anybody ever considere eating iguana eggs for breakfast?

It might perhaps become a delicacy?

I will look for it on our restaurant menus.

There is a CI$3.5 million bounty on the heads of the iguanas but the eggs are woth nothing.

Culling iguanas and cooking their eggs. That might be even better in getting rid of those damned green lizards.

I now rest my case.