COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Black and White Tegu Lizard is no longer lawfully allowed in South Carolina.
It is illegal to bring black and white Tegu Lizards into South Carolina or breed them in the state as of last Friday.
"It's pretty concerning with the potential impacts that they could have," says South Carolina's Department of Natural Resources State Herpetologist Andrew Grosse. "It is a species that is native to South America, it's very popular in the pet trade."
Grosse says this invasive species of lizard can get up to four feet long. Once let out into the wild, they wreak havoc on our native species causing an issue here in the Palmetto State.
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Grosse says, "The concern is really what we've seen in Florida, they've been established in Florida and in South Georgia for some time now and seeing some of the impacts they've made on the native species there."
Grosse says they've been known to dig up eggs in alligator nests, eat eggs from ground-nesting birds, and most concerning, they have been known to eat tortoise eggs, which is an endangered species at the moment.
"We know that they can and will eat quite a few different things on the landscape so adding a large predator that's not native to an ecosystem to a new area where it doesn't have many predators itself can certainly be problematic for our native species," Gross tells us.
If you currently own a tegu lizard, you have to have it microchipped or tagged and then registered with DNR by September 25. After that date, it will be illegal to own a tegu lizard in the state.
According to SCDNR, if an individual possesses an unregistered tegu after September 25, they will be in violation. If a person imports a tegu into the state as of now, since it's after May 28, they will be in violation.
Click here for more information from SCDNR.