The vigilant crews of two vessels have prevented two invasive reptiles from entering the island.

According to the autumn edition of the Envirotalk newsletter, two green iguanas were discovered on two ships that were docked in Bermuda during the summer.

The pair were identified as being among the most invasive reptiles making their way through the Caribbean.

Once established on a new island, the reptiles can cause “a variety of problems”, the newsletter said, including havoc for horticulture, agriculture and infrastructure.

The newsletter added that they have proved “very difficult” to remove.

The recent encounter was not the first time the species attempted to colonise Bermuda.

In 2000, a young green iguana was caught wandering across the container port in Hamilton, the newsletter said.

“These incidences serve to remind us how important biosecurity is in preventing the establishment of unwanted invaders to our island home,” it said.

In September 2021, when the House of Assembly passed The Invasive Alien Species Act, Walter Roban, the former Deputy Premier and Minister of Home Affairs, told MPs that the economic cost and environmental menace caused by unwanted plants or animals that infested new environments could be huge.

The legislation was designed to combat the importation, breeding, sale and intentional cultivation of problem plants and animals and organisms.

Mr Roban said that unwanted imports could also “reduce the resilience of natural habits, agriculture and urban areas to the impact of climate change”.

He highlighted the accidental introduction of scale insect blight in the late 1940s, which wiped out 95 per cent of native Bermuda cedar trees — a gap filled by “rampant pests” such as casuarina and Brazil pepper.

At the time, Christopher Famous, a Progressive Labour Party backbencher, highlighted the environmental havoc caused in Cayman by the green iguana.

An island-wide cull started in 2018 after the population of the invasive specie — which stood at 1.5 million on Grand Cayman — continually affected the island’s environment, including farms.

By 2023, culling teams had killed 1.45 million of the reptiles which were said to have been introduced for both the pet trade and as a food source.