‘It had some power to it’: Huge monitor lizard caught in West Tampa

Trevor Sochocki
·2 min read

WEST TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — As soon as Lisa Strout saw the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission come up on her phone on Tuesday, she put everything down and headed out.

“Yeah, it’s exciting,” Strout, who volunteers for the FWC, recalled. “You just never know what you’re going to get.”

This time, someone reported seeing a reptile that didn’t belong.

“When they said a monitor lizard,” Strout said. “That is something we’ve never had the opportunity to put our hands on before.”

Riverview High School students recount catching Goliath Grouper off Turtle Beach

But this time, at the corner of Race Track and Douglas Roads in West Tampa, she picked up her first rock monitor lizard.

“Just a little over 4 feet long, including the tail,” Strout recalled. “And it had some power to it. In one of the pictures, I’m holding it and you can really feel the power in the tail.”

According to the FWC’s website, it’s the rock monitor’s relative, the Nile monitor lizard, that’s illegal to have as a pet, and is an invasive species.

“These lizards, which are having ecological costs,” explained Dr. Andrew Kramer, an assistant professor at USF, studying the impacts of invasive species. “Those are hard to value.”

Kramer said Florida’s active pet trade and mild climate leads to a lot of animals in the wild that shouldn’t be there.

198-pound ‘monster’ python captured in Florida

“If an animal or a plant is able to do well in Florida’s climate,” Dr. Kramer said. “Once it’s out once, as they say, the cat’s out of the bag.”

Strout said she’s seeing those invasive species keep creeping into the state too.

“I think we’re stuck with them,” Strout said. “It’s like the pythons. You’re never going to get rid of the pythons.”

Strout and the FWC encourage people to report sightings of nonnative species using their online portal or the Ivegot1 app. You can find instructions for using both of those on the FWC’s website.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA.