[Garden & Gun] Reaching lengths of four feet, with distinctive black and white coloring, it’s safe to say an adult tegu stands out in a Georgia pine forest. Popular in the pet trade and native to Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, these predatory lizards are the most recent on the list of invasive species that could pose big problems for Southern ecosystems. The good news? It might still be early enough to stop them. "When these lizards get too large, people just release them," says Dr. Chris Jenkins of the Orianne Society, an amphibian and reptile conservation group based in Tiger, Georgia. Released pet tegus are the most likely cause of the populations that have cropped up in southeastern portions of the state over the last few years, prompting a recent warning from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which is spearheading an effort to eradicate the invaders. Once in the wild, the reptiles are well suited to establishing a foothold. "Tegus can live in a lot of places, and they eat a lot of things," says Georgia DNR biologist Daniel Sollenberger. Jenkins adds that their large size enables them to cover long distances, and that they have a high reproductive output, with females laying clutches of thirty eggs on average.