i heard the stories of Hawaii and i read today on ccic that some are in Florida and Cali. is this true? florida and cali have wild chams?
now i wonder a lot about introducing them into the wild. it would be great to get them to be actually survive in America on the mainland and go out one day herping and find a bunch or one depending on things.
is it ethically or morally wrong to introduce chams into the wild of America? would it cause more problems then good? i believe it is illegal but i often pondered the idea of doing this.
any ideas on this or first hand experience with seeing wild chams?

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-Matt!

well i live in cenral florida, and i havent seen one ever! it may be florida, but it gets way to cold in Jan and Feb. i know further down south their are a ton of iguanas. i see them basking along the highway in the morning. lol i have read their are wild veileds in Hawaii.

i never heard of the veileds in Hawaii i heard of jacksons tho.
here is the link for the information i read. it was really interesting.
http://www.chamaeleonidae.com/range.html

haha i wouldnt doubt that chameleons live here. the only thing that get me is the city wipes out the insect population. in the summer they spray weekly. i live in brevard county....a hundred years ago it was mosquito county. lol

yea its too cold for lizards to live near chicago. we get salamanders tho. is it wrong to introduce them into the wild tho? that is the big question.

oh yea any non native species is a pest. remember that big thing with the snakefish up in new england. they eat and take over everything. that is one in a thousand examples.

whenever you introduce a new animal into a preexisting ecosystem, you will most likely ruin the balance. Do you remember the incident with toads that are introduced into Australia?

So, yes, it's ethically and morally wrong.

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CARE FOR VEILED AND PANTHER CHAMELEON AT:
http://chamworld.blogspot.com
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http://franskusuma.blogspot.com

i get snake fish by me. people hunt them with bows and stuff. its funny you say that i watched a thing on them last week.

Just for the sake of answering the question I don't think it is wrong to introduce them to the wild, but only if the place where they are to be living or may wander off to is suitable by hobbyists standards.

i.e. Temp. (24 hours/day 365 days/)
Amount of rain
Food populus (whether or not pesticides are used in the area)
....etcetera


I doubt there are many places other than where they are native to that can meet these requirements without intervention from people.

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2.1 Panthers 0.1 Veiled 0.1pyg 0.1 Flapneck & a Mellers in a pear tree

you are looking at it from a very narrow point.
For example, veiled chameleon is considered a pest in Hawaii..
As they end up eating certain species of local birds. and since veiled do not have a natural predator readily available in Hawaii, they can thrive there and in the end obliterating a certain species of bird.

When the balance of ecosystem is ruined, everybody who lived there will negatively affected.