Cold weather leaves iguanas in Miramar stunned — and easy to catch. Have a look
West Broward turned into one of the chilliest regions in South Florida over the weekend as a rare cold snap sent temperatures plunging toward freezing — and offered bad news for iguanas in Miramar.
The invasive reptiles’ battle against the cold — and capture — continued on Monday, Feb. 2.
It all began Sunday, as temperatures dipped into the low 30s, and even the high 20s in some sections of West Broward, and iguana removal companies took advantage of their incapacitated prey.
They reported an unusually high volume of calls from western cities such as Miramar and Pembroke Pines, where residents woke up to green or brown iguanas lying motionless across the cities.
Photos taken by Miami Herald photographers and trappers in Pembroke Pines showed moribund iguanas, highly disliked for the damage they do to Florida plant life, motionless in their usual haunts.
Across South Florida, trappers with Redline Iguana Removal said they were scooping up iguanas like pancakes as the cold weather overwhelmed the cold-blooded reptiles.
“I would say we found the most iguanas in West Broward, where it got a little colder than on the east side of the county,” Blake Wilkins, owner of Redline Iguana Removal, told the Miramar News on Feb. 2.
Wilkins said at one Pembroke Pines golf course, his trappers picked up more than 100 incapacitated iguanas.
“It was crazy,” he said.
Wilkins said his crews began working before sunrise to take advantage of the cold conditions. By Sunday afternoon, his trappers had already visited roughly 100 locations across the region.
They were back at work at dawn Monday, expanding into Miami-Dade.
“We’ll know better what the final count is at the end of the day Monday, but a ballpark figure is about 2,000 iguanas caught,” Wilkins said.
The weather massacre for the iguanas was sealed as the temperature at the National Weather Service station near Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport at 6:53 a.m. on Sunday hit 35 degrees, just slightly above the daily record low of 33 recorded in 1966.
Wilkins, who has been removing iguanas for about a decade, said this cold front produced more frozen iguanas than he has ever seen. About half of the iguanas his crews collected were already dead, he told the Miami Herald.
For those iguanas that survived, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission temporarily lifted its usual restrictions over the weekend, allowing people on Sunday and Monday to trap the non-native invasive species and bring them to designated FWC offices for humane killing or transfer to permitted pet operators.
As the weather warms up, Wilkins warned West Broward residents not to handle the animals themselves. Iguanas that appear frozen can revive quickly once temperatures rise, becoming aggressive.
This story was originally published February 2, 2026 at 11:12 AM.
