Lizards are important members of most tropical ecosystems. They sit in the middle of the food chain as food for predators such as birds of prey and the occasional mammal, and they themselves are predators of, among other things, insects. Lizards eat a lot of insects.
Don’t Use Pesticides
Following this line of thought through; if you don’t have any insects, the likelihood is that you won’t have many lizards. If you use lots of insecticide, you won’t have many insects, therefore you won’t have many lizards.
You should be able to see what I’m getting at. Don’t use pesticides! It is no surprise that The Treehouse in Marigot Bay had a lot of lizards in its grounds. That is because there are a lot of insects and that is because the wildlife conscious owners of this hideaway don’t use insecticides. Unfortunately, a lot of accommodation on St Lucia is ‘fogged’ before people come to stay. Fogging entails a man walking round the apartment billowing out insecticide spray into every nook and cranny of the building in order to kill as many insects as possible, to make sure that the human residents don’t get pestered by bugs.
Stop it!
Fogging Kills
It is no surprise that the apartments, cabins and hotels that are fogged do not have many insects in or near them. Guess what? The fogged accommodation doesn’t have the same diverse populations of reptiles and other animals that you find at The Treehouse either. Sarah and Pablo at The Treehouse simply do not use pesticides. Why would you consider poisoning the very things that you want in your life? Allowing bugs into your life and garden is a clear advantage when you are trying to encourage flora and fauna. There are so many insects that I don’t know the names of as well as thousands of ants. There are also many, many lizards and many birds that feed on them.
Whilst some of the lizards in St Lucia were more than happy to come and say ‘Hello’ to you, most of them will scrabble away into the scrub or up a tree when you get too close. You soon get used to being stared at by a small reptile when you are about to have something to eat. There is something soothing about showing a lizard that you are nice and not something to be afraid of. We had several residents lizards, all of whom seemed to have their own little place to call home.
As well as being friendly co-residents, the lizards seemed to be doing a pretty good job of keeping the mosquito population down – I got bitten by insects just twice in 2 weeks. Who needs pesticides?!?
