The Department of Environment (DoE) is preparing to launch a full scale culling operation aiming to begin a significant and ongoing reduction of the invasive green iguana population on Grand Cayman.

The cull is expected to begin in mid to late October 2018 and continuing through the end of 2019 and beyond.

This operation developed from experimental cull trials in 2016-7 leading to a formal Business Case which was approved by the Ministry for Health, Environment, Culture and Housing (HECH) in mid-August this year.

A request for information to known cullers and the community at large has revealed that at an incentive of $5 per iguana, there is adequate local capacity poised to remove significantly more iguanas than will hatch in the 2019 breeding season. This should lead to a substantial reduction in the population.

Through the Central Procurement Office the DoE has just released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the management services that this major operation will require. The successful company (the cull manager) will be contracted to operate an iguana receiving, weighing and counting station at the George Town landfill, to ensure cullers meet agreed performance targets and adhere to humane culling standards, and to pay cullers for the iguanas they bring to the station, to respond to communications from cullers and the general public, and to provide detailed accounting and reporting to DoE.

Cullers will be registered by DoE, issued with culler registration cards, and then will cull under sub-contract to the cull manager, who will be able to pay the cullers in a more timely way than is possible for government. Culler registration is expected to take place in October, and will be open to all Caymanians 18 and older, and to local companies with trade & business licenses that are compatible with iguana culling activities, provided they can commit to culling at least 5,000 green iguanas per year (417 per month).

A Project Steering Committee involving DoE, the Ministry and the cull manager will set monthly targets agreed with the cullers, address any issues arising and ensure the project is moving forward efficiently and on course to meet its objective.

Companies who are interested in bidding for the cull manager contract should download the RFP from https://cayman.bonfirehub.com/opportunities

The RFP will be open to bidders until 5:00 PM Thursday 20th September 2018.

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IMAGE: Male wild Green Iguana (Iguana iguana) Wikipedia