[4] Wild individuals, particularly nesting females, often appear deep reddish-brown in color after digging in the coarse ferralic soils of the Hellshire Hills region.

[5] The pores of the female are smaller and they do not have a dorsal crest as high as the male's, making the animal somewhat sexually dimorphic.

[1] The Jamaican iguana declined dramatically during the second half of the 19th century, after the introduction of the small Asian mongoose as a form of rat and snake control, until it was believed to exist only on the Goat islands near the Hellshire hills.

The species was rediscovered in August 1990 when a live adult male iguana was chased into a hollow log by a dog of Edwin Duffus, a hog hunter in the Hellshire Hills.

[1] The single direct cause for the Jamaican iguana's decline can be attributed to the introduction of the small Asian mongoose (Urva auropunctata) as a form of snake-control.

[7] The biggest current threat to the animals' existence is no longer from the spread of the mongoose, but from the charcoal industry.

[1][6][9] From within the safety of this environment, they are reared until they are large enough to survive in the wild and predators such as the mongoose are no longer a threat, a process known as "headstarting".

[6][10][11] This health screening has been used to baseline the normal physiologic values of the species, identifying potential future problems due to parasites, diseases, etc.

[12] The U.S. captive population doubled in size in August 2006 with the hatching of 22 Jamaican rock iguanas at the Indianapolis Zoo.