Ever heard of lizard-type creatures in BC lakes?

[Deleted]

I have some old articles dating back to 1978 (I'll type them out and post them here when I have a chance)that report sightings of large lizard-type creatures in local lakes like Cultus, Pitt and some high mountain lakes in the Fraser Valley region.

Anyone ever heard of anything like a large dark colored lizard or salamander-type creature being sighted on any of our local lakes?

[Gerry]

now stories about these critters in Pitt Lake just freak me out!
What was the story about the woman who stayed in the trappers raised cabin. She went out one night to investigate noises coming from below and saw all of these creatures under the cabin hunting something or other!

[Deleted]

Hi GC,

I have a couple of good articles from our local newspapers regarding sightings of these large, dark colored snake or salamander type creatures spotted by witnesses on Pitt and some high mountain lakes in the Fraser Valley.

I watched a video at my home that was a studio copy of an episode of a weekly television show called Alden's Outdoors that was filmed in 1977. Well known Fraser Valley outdoorsman/broadcaster/writer Barrie Alden (Barrie hosts the Fraser Valley Sportsman show at the Abbotsford Tradex each year) was the show's writer and host, and Alden's Outdoors ran on Coquitlam Cable (north side of the Fraser River) for a few years.

The particular episode I watched featured a prospector/trapper named Warren Scott, and was filmed in late June of 1977 at his huge treehouse-style cabin on the shores of a alpine lake located at 5000 elevation near the noth end of Pitt Lake.

Scott went on to explain during the show that his wife would no longer stay at the cabin. Apparently she had heard noises below the cabin (it was built 20 feet up in the trees) and upon searching the ground with a flashlight, she had spotted these huge black lizard/salamander-type creatures chasing and eating bush mice. After seeing the creatures kill the mice and walk back to the lake only to disappear under the surface, she refused to spend any more of her time at the cabin.

It might be interesting to note that in John Green's book Encounters with Bigfoot on page 19, Charles Flood of New Westminster mentions in a sworn statutory declaration of seeing similar black lizards in Cougar Lake, near Hope, BC, in the Holy Cross Mountains.

Also, although it was only briefly, Warren Scott did mention Sasquatch during the show. As the camera panned around the cabin's interior over the host's shoulder, Scott could be seen flipping the pages of a rather large sketch book that he had filled with all manner and size of Sasquatch drawings. Since the host/producer was at the location specifically looking for these "giant black salamanders," he quickly changed the subject from Sasquatch back to his intention.

Warren Scott also made a statement about a certain valley between the Pitt and Harrison Lake country that the Sasquatch used regularly as a migration route.

Interestingly, my friend Dan Gerak owner of the Pitt River Lodge made the exact same statement as Scott to me about a particular valley North of Pitt Lake where he had found a fresh set of 17 inch Sasquatch tracks in. Dan said it was the only valley between the Pitt and Harrison Lakes that did not end in box canyons.

Regarding the giant black salamander/lizards, I have a couple of very good articles I'll type out and post here when I have a chance.

Bushman

[Deleted]

The National Post, Friday, September 27, 2002

One man’s search for king-sized salamanders

By Mark Hume in Vancouver

A large, black “something” that was reported swimming in a lake near Vancouver has revived a hunt for a new species of giant salamander that has been long dismissed as myth.
“There is definitely something out there,” says Barrie Alden, an outdoors writer and broadcaster who for more than 20 years has been collecting anecdotal information about huge salamanders more than a meter long. At that length, they would be more than three times the size of the Pacific giant salamander — a rare, seldom encountered amphibian that can grow up to 42 centimeters.
“They are much larger than the Pacific giant salamander. They are huge,” Mr. Alden said.
“It’s still in the league of the Sasquatch as far as I’m concerned. But there are more sightings … when you put it all together, it tends to make you think they exist.
“I think there is enough sighting evidence now to think these creatures inhabit our deep, cold lakes.”
Mr. Alden has believed in what he calls “giant black salamanders” since 1978, when he interviewed Warren Scott, a prospector who had been exploring in the rugged wilderness northwest of Pitt Lake, just outside Vancouver in the Fraser Valley.
Mr. Alden repeated those stories and began lobbying for a research expedition to find “the dragons of the forest,” he was laughed at. Mr. Scott, meanwhile, had vanished, leaving him with no corroboration.
“I was ridiculed over that,” Mr. Alden said. And so he stopped talking about the giant black salamanders but continued collecting stories.
Over the years, he said, he has heard from loggers, commercial fishermen and others who have reported seeing “big lizards” in the Pitt Lake area, on the Fraser River and in nearby Harrison and Cultus Lakes.
The latest report came just last week when Danny Gerak, who runs the Pitt River Lodge, a sports fishing resort, encountered “something different” swimming on the lake.
“I was coming up the lake, cruising along, 8:30 in the morning, crystal clear, flat, calm,” he said. “About 300 yards out I saw something swimming. I said, “Holy cow, look at this thing, it’s a giant snake.’”
But as he drew closer, he realized it was not a snake and was unlike anything he’d seen before.
“I’ve seen otters, mergansers, minks, all kinds of ducks — this wasn’t anything like that,” he said.
“Its head was raised about eight inches above the surface and it had this black, undulating body. It was swimming like a snake, but with its head held up. It was solid black.”
Mr. Gerak’s boat drew within about 20 meters and then the creature lowered its head and swam out of sight. It did not surface again.
“I’ve seen garter snakes swim. It wasn’t like that at all. It was about three-and-half, to four feet long. Its head was the length and thickness of a beer can. I’ve been going up and down that lake for 30 years. This was definitely unusual.”

continued on page 2 ....

[Deleted]

New species unlikely, researcher says

Mr. Gerak said others in the Pitt area have since told him they’ve seen a similar creature in the same area, near the narrows, where Pitt Lake empties into Pitt River. There are extensive mud flats in the area, which Mr. Alden says fits other sightings of giant black salamanders.
And there is a report of at least one being seen on land.
“There’s an old tale of a logger seeing a lizard cross the road in front of his truck,” Mr. Gerak said. “It sure makes you wonder. I’m going to be watching for it and I’m going to have to get a camera for on the boat.”
John Kirk, president of the British Columbia Cryptozoology Club, said the reports are intriguing and deserve to be investigated.
“I would think, if there are giant salamanders up there, that we should be able to find evidence,” he said. “Perhaps egg masses could be located. Either that, or one has to either … be caught by people or we will have to get a carcass …. I know I’m going to go up there and have a look.”
Mr. Alden said he plans to start looking in the area of the Pitt narrows and he expects others will too, once the word is out.
Mr. Kirk, whose organization takes seriously reports of animals that have not yet been identified by science — which includes the Sasquatch and the Ogopogo — said a photograph would help but would not be conclusive, because digital manipulation is so easy.
He said there have been several reports of giant black salamanders over the years, and he thinks the latest from Pitt Lake sounds credible. But that fails to prove anything.
“They did see something in the water. The big question is — what is it?” he said.
John Richardson, who works in the Department of Forest Sciences at the University of B.C., and is researching the demography of the Pacific giant salamander, said the sightings are interesting, but he doubts it indicates an undiscovered species is swimming around out there.
“The probability of it being a new species is very small,” he said. “But you hate to say something is impossible.”
Mr. Richardson said if there really was a giant black salamander species, it likely would have been captured by now, or at least observed by wildlife biologists who each year spend countless hours in the field doing research.
“If there was something that was living there it would have to have a sustainable population. To be breeding, there would have to be hundreds of them, not just a few, so you’d think there would be some evidence of that.”
He said it is unlikely the Pitt Lake mystery is just an over-sized Pacific giant salamander, because they have never been observed north of the Fraser River, which is where the Pitt drainage is.
Mr. Richardson said there are huge salamanders, known as Sirens and Hellbenders, that live in the U.S. southeast, and that grow to more than one meter in length. There is also a species of giant Chinese salamander (Andrias davidianus) that grows to 1.5 meters.
“It’s possible someone had one of those and let it go. That happens from time to time. People do that with pet caymans and alligators. They can live for a short period in our lakes. It’s possible something was thrown in there.”
Mr. Richardson said there are sightings of all kinds of unexplained creatures, but scientists need more that that to get them excited.
“People still report Ogopogo and Sasquatch. But we are still waiting for proof.”

Source:National Post
Author: Mark Hume
[e-mail]

[Deleted]

Interestingly, South Carolina has a crypto creature called the Lizard Man. I saw an Animal X show that was about it the other evening. I have heard of the legend before but had never seen anything about it. My team and I had an interesting discussion about it the other day. Here is the archive we used:

Lizard Men
One of the most bizarre creatures reported in recent times is undoubtedly a nightmarish entity from South Carolina, which has been aptly nicknamed Lizard Man. According to eyewitnesses, it walks on its hind legs, stands just over 7 feet tall, and has glowing red eyes and green scaly skin. It has only three toes on each foot and three fingers on each hand, but every toe and every finger has a 4-inch long black claw at its tip. Lizard Man first made its presence felt at around 2 A.M. on June 29, 1988. This was when 17-year-old Christopher Davis was changing a flat tire on his car near Scape Ore Swamp, which is just outside the backwater village of Bishopville in South Carolina's Lee County. Chris was placing the jack into his car boot when he spied something very large running on its hind legs towards him, across a field close by. As it drew near, Chris jumped inside his car and tried to slam the door shut, but the horrifying reptile-man seized it from the other side, gripping the mirror as it attempted to wrench the door open! And when Chris tried to escape by accelerating hard, his scaly attacker jumped on to the car's roof! Luckily, it soon fell off as the vehicle sped away. When Chris arrived home he was trembling with fear, the roof of his car bore a series of long scratches and the wing mirror was severely twisted. The massive media publicity generated by this incident led to many other Lizard Man reports emerging during the summer of 1988, but the same could not be said for Lizard Man itself, who eventually disappeared without ever having been satisfactorily explained. Interestingly, this bizarre episode is far from being unique. Long before Chris Davis's frightening experience, many other parts of North America had also hosted encounters with reptilian man-monsters, astonishingly similar in appearance to the amphibious "gillman" starring in Hollywood's classic Creature from the Black Lagoon movie. On August 19, 1972, for example, Robin Flewellyn and Gordon Pike were allegedly chased away from the beach around Thetis Lake in British Columbia, Canada, by a 5 foot tall bipedal monster with six sharp points on its head, which had unexpectedly surfaced in the lake. Four days later, at around 3:30 P.M. on August 23, Russell Van Nice and Michael Gold could only watch in amazement when what was presumably the same creature suddenly stepped out of the lake, looked around and then walked back into the water, disappearing from sight. According to their description, it was humanoid in shape, but with scaly silver skin, huge ears, the face of a monster and a pointed projection on its head. In 1977, a State Conservation naturalist called Alfred Hulstruck claimed that a scale-covered man-beast regularly emerged at dusk from the red algae-choked waters of Southern Tier in New York State. Five years earlier, in March 1972, two policemen saw a frogfaced humanoid creature, about the size of a dog, plunge into Little Miami River near Loveland, Ohio. In this same area, back in 1955, a respectable businessman claimed that he had seen a quartet of 3 foot tall, frog-faced creatures squatting under a bridge like fairytale trolls. Another longstanding tradition of scaly humanoids features the fish-men of Inzignanin, near Chicora- an area sandwiched between North and South Carolina. These beings were said to be covered with scales and had webbed hands. Most distinctive of all, however, were their tails, which were as thick as a man's arm, about 18 inches long and relatively inflexible, like those of crocodiles or alligators. According to local lore, they lived only on raw fish and therefore soon died out when the area's fish supplies became exhausted. Equally strange was the 6 foot tall, fluorescent-eye monster that clawed Charles Wetzel's car on the evening of November 8, 1958 as he drove by the Santa Ana River near Riverside, California. Although often placed in the bigfoot category of mystery beasts, it was much more akin to the reptilian monsters, as noted by the writer Loren Coleman, because it was covered in leaf-like scales and had a protrusible beak-like mouth. Needless to say, no real-life creatures of the "Black Lagoon" variety have ever been proven by science to exist on earth, either during the present or the past. Yet, if the course of evolution had taken a different turn, our planet may indeed have been home to life forms of this type. In 1982, the scientific journal Syllogeus published a very unusual but highly original paper by two well-respected Canadian paleontologists, Dr. Dale A. Russell and Dr. R. Seguin from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa. Its subject was the fascinating possibility that, if the dinosaurs had never died out, they would have eventually given rise to a dinosaurian counterpart of human beings. In their paper, Russell and Seguin speculated about the likely appearance of such a creature and suggested that it would have stood upright on its hind legs, with three fingers on each hand. They even constructed a model of this ‘dinosaur man' and what is so amazing about it is that in overall appearance it is remarkably similar to the descriptions of Lizard Man and other reptilian man-beasts reported from modern-day North America!
This article is courtesy of The World of The Strange.

[sebastian]

John Kirk's book has a small chapter on the black alligator/salamander-things of Pitt Lake. Some claimed that there is a valley north of Pitt resembles tropical forrest due to the volcanism and dinosaur-typed creatures live there. Actually salamander makes more sense; I don't think that any large reptile can survive the winter here (well, there are garter snakes).
cheers,
seb

[Deleted]

Seb,

The valley you speak of is the valley Warren Scott called home.

Warren Scott claimed these salamanders buried themselves in the mud or silt at the bottom of the high mountain lake in his valley and went into a hibernation-type state.

Scott also mentioned that about the first week of July the salamander-type creatures would again reappear from the lake at night and catch small bush mice to eat.

I think I reported the last sighting of these creatures on Pitt Lake to John Kirk via e-mail on BCCS site. John's friend Chad Arment was also very interested in the giant salamander-type creature sighting.

Bushman

[Deleted]

Ran across another old newpaper article in my files that may be of interest to some:

Lake creature in Cultus?

By Lisa Morry - [e-mail]

There's a lake creature that visits Cultus Lake and there could be a rare species of giant salamander here, according to the head of the B.C. Scientific Cryptozoology Club.
The report of the Cultus version of Ogopogo is six years old, but nevertheless John Kirk was staring intently at the far shore as he was interviewed for this article, where he said he saw "anomalous phenomena" on the lake.
"What's that out there?" he asked. "That unusual ripple formation in the water? It's very unusual. Jeepers, creepers. It could be a standing wave from the boat, but..."
However, Kirk wasn't drawing conclusions. He said boat wakes often fool people into thinking there is something in the water. In fact, there was something rippling the lake this sunny September afternoon, that was warm enough that a handful of brave souls were swimming off a nearby dock.
It was perfect weather for lake monsters, according to Kirk, who works in the language division of the RCMP and is one of the founding members of the 13-year-old cryptozoology club, whose chair is Dr. Paul Leblond, former head of the Ocean Science department at the University of B.C. and Dr. Ed Bousfield, former research associate with the Royal B.C. Museum and who worked at the Museum of Natural History in Ottawa and runs a Cadborosaurus scanner off the coast.
"It's got to be a sunny day, hot, usually, and calm," Kirk said.
The Aug. 28 sighting of a lake creature in Pitt Lake has brought the focus onto sightings of an Ogopogo-type creature or giant salamanders in other local lakes, including Cultus, Chilliwack and Harrison lakes and the Fraser River.
The water was as smooth as glass on Aug. 28, just a few weeks ago, when Danny Gerak, who operates a lodge at the north end of Pitt Lake, saw what he describes as a three-foot long black lizard.
"It wasn't an otter, it wasn't anything else," Gerak said. "I've never seen anything like it before."
Since then, a family canoeing on the lake has also seen a creature like the one that was swimming back and forth in front of Gerak's boat, he said.
Historically, there are reports of giant salamander-like creatures in Pitt Lake, including live samples, one of which was shown to a reporter years ago, Kirk said.
There are two classes of strange animals that inhabit local waters, according to Kirk-giant salamanders, which have been seen in Pitt Lake, Cultus Lake, Chilliwack Lake, an unnamed lake in Manning Park and the Fraser River, and lake creatures, on the scale of Okanagan Lake's Ogopogo, which have been seen in Cultus Lake, Harrison Lake, Okanagan Lake, Shushwap Lake, Skaha Lake and Kamloops Lake.
It was a family from Surrey that spotted the Cultus Lake monster, which Kirk believes may have wandered in by accident because Cultus isn't big enough to support a creature of that size.
"You've got to have a food source. If they're 20 feet long, they consume a significant amount of fish. They have to," he said.
It was July of 1996 when the self-employed Surrey businessman was out rowing a rubber raft on the lake near Sunnyside campground with his wife and kids, Kirk said. They smelled a terrible odour like spoiled fish and then the wife saw a barrel come to the surface but it was actually a head like a giant salamander, Kirk said.
"It was only 20 feet away so they had a good view. She said it was like a large snake with a torso like a telephone pole. Then the configuration changed and it became humped and there were six humps in a row. At the highest point they were two feet out of the water...It swam in a southerly direction with vertical undulations.
"They said the skin was salamander-like and it was very shiny. The creature hardly made a sound and created very small ripples, which was far less than could be expected. The creature swam five feet past them and then the humps started to sink in succession.
"They think there may have been flippers or some kind of appendages on the hump near the head. The man, who sounded like a calm person, said it was the first time in his life he was ever in a state of shock... They said that the creature was majestic and then they said it was more savage and primitive."
What got Kirk interested in creatures that hide from view was a sighting of Ogopogo in Okanagan Lake the first time he visited there in 1987. He saw something poking out of the water, along with members of his family and a group of people they didn't know, he said.
"I said that's not a boat, it's a head. It had a massive, three-foot head and it was propelling itself along the lake," Kirk said.
Several dogs at an estate below where they were watching went crazy as the creature swam by, he said.
"It was just languid," he said. "When it sank it left some kind of secretion like an oily shadow behind."
Since then, Kirk has been back many times and two expeditions to Okanagan Lake have been televised in France and Japan, he said. On one of those expeditions, one of their divers felt something brush against him, and thinking it was one of his colleagues, looked around and saw his diving partner was further away.
"Whether it was an Ogopogo or not is another story," Kirk said.
In Harrison Lake, the most recent sighting of a large lake creature was in 1998, Kirk said, but the sightings go back in history to reports of First Nations elders saying they were very familiar with the creatures, Kirk said.
The best sighting in Harrison was in 1978 when two women driving along the lake shore witnessed a creature swimming at about the same speed at which their car was driving, Kirk said.
In Chilliwack Lake, the creatures are more likely to be giant salamanders, which are also thought to inhabit Cultus, Kirk said. The sightings in Chilliwack Lake mostly come from prospectors' tales.
The issue of lake monsters has to be put in perspective, Kirk said. The lake with the most sightings is Okanagan where there have been about 10,000 reports since 1972, but there are roads that go along the side of the lake, making it easy for people to look down. At Cultus, the lake is not as easily visible, although Kirk said it would make a good study subject and the area is notorious in cryptozoological circles for other creatures, such as Sasquatches, spotted in the 1950s.
"It's a great place to look for lake monsters and very relaxing," Kirk said.

Source: www.chilliwacktimes.com

[Deleted]

I read with great interest an article entitled "Croc on campus" that was featured on the front page of the Friday, April 27, 2007 edition of the Langley Advance. Given the near freezing temperatures we have been having, I find it extremely difficult to believe that the reptile recently spotted in Langley's Salmon River is a caiman. Here's the article:

Croc on campus

A wild crocodillian reptile, probably a caiman, has been spotted in the river near Trinity Western University.

by Matthew Claxton

It's been a while since crocodiles regularly called Langley home - a few million years before the last ice age, at least.

Now there is at least one carnivorous reptile back on the loose in the local wilds.

The curator and volunteers from the Reptile Refuge are trying to catch a 60-centimetre-long (two feet) critter that has been seen in the Salmon River adjacent to Trinity Western University.

"He's definitely been hanging around in here," said Paul Springate, the Reptile Refuge curator. Belly and claw marks in the river mud are a sure sign of the creature's presence.

The animal is not big enough to be dangerous to humans. However, the Canadian climate is a danger to the croc.

"I'm astounded that he's still alive, given the cold water temperatures," Springate said. "As the season warms, this croc could survive until about October, but wouldn't survive the winter for sure - this little guy right now needs my help."

Bait will be laid out to entice the creature, and Springate hopes to take it to an aquarium.

"Right now, the croc knows he is free and in the wild. Sadly, once he's caught, he will go into an aquarium and live the rest of his life in captivity. Knowing that I have to take that freedom away is the hardest part of my job," said Springate.

The animal is likely a caiman, a species related to crocodiles and alligators.

Caimans hail from South and Central America, and are often sold as pets. As the animals get bigger, some pet owners abandon them because they become too hard to care for.

published on 04/27/2007

Source: www.langleyadvance.com/issues07/044207/news/044207nn1.html

[Deleted]

Here is footage of the Japanese giant salamander,these guys grow upto 6ft long.Yes, they are endangered but there are still many of them.Could they survive in B.C???


www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYF_yIoOcEo

[Deleted]

Hunt called off for campus alligator

Mystery leaves question of mistake, hoax or prehistoric lizard
Glenda Luymes, The Province
Published: Tuesday, May 01, 2007
LANGLEY - Was it a hoax or a prehistoric lizard on the brink of extinction? Whatever the case, a small alligator reported to be loose in a ravine at Trinity Western University has mysteriously vanished.

"It's become a wild goose chase," said Paul Springate, the animal shelter curator who was tracking the renegade reptile.

"I don't want to call it a hoax, so maybe the better term is mistake. Some security guards saw splashing in the water, but we think it may have just been beavers." And the belly and claw marks found last week imprinted in the muddy embankment? "Muskrats," said Springate. "Well, I hope it was muskrats." The crocodilian hunter said if there actually was an alligator in the ravine, it is now likely dead. Traps set Wednesday containing salmon and pork were not touched, and there were no further sightings in a week of slogging and splashing through the ravine.

"The best-case scenario is that this was a mistake and that the alligator never existed in the first place," said Springate, who runs White Rock's Reptile Refuge, a non-profit society that cares for unwanted and abused reptiles and other exotic pets.

But Barrie Alden, the former Lower Mainland director of the B.C. Wildlife Federation, said he thinks the alligator may be a creature he's been tracking since the 1970s.

"There've been repeated sightings of this type of animal at almost all of the deep B.C. lakes," said the ardent amateur cryptozoologist.

"This is still in the realm of the sasquatch, but the ancient stories and my research confirm it -- these reptiles, small alligators or large salamanders, keep appearing. . . . Mark my words, one of these days, someone's going to discover a new species and it will explain everything."

[e-mail]

Source: www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=9c2fb25d-ba1d-409b-87f2-7ad8a79c8138

[Deleted]

Interesting for sure.

When I was a kid, back in the seventies living in southern Alberta, I would collect all sorts of creatures for pets.

Tiger salamanders were a favorite of mine. I never seen one in a swamp or pond but caught every one I ever had in dark, damp dirt cellars that had a sump. They were very easy to train to eat from your hand.

Most specimens I collected were about 5 or 6 inches from nose to tip of tail, black with beautiful yellow bands.

I became known as this weird kid who loved reptiles and amphibians of all types. One day this farmer brought in to town a tiger salamander he caught which was absolutely massive. It was easily a good 14 inches long and around 9 or 10 inches in girth.

I would have never believed a salamander could be that large, especially on the prairies of Alberta.

[Deleted]

Croc hunt was wild goose chase

The hunt for a crocodile at TWU was "a waste of my time," said a Surrey reptile expert.

by Matthew Claxton

The tale of a croc at Trinity Western University was a crock, said the man who spent much of last week hunting for it.

Paul Springate of the Reptile Refuge in Surrey said he has found no sign that a young crocodile, alligator or caiman was ever in the swampy stretch of the Salmon River around the university.

On April 26, TWU called in Springate after reports that something reptilian had been seen in the creek surface.

After more than five hours spent wading through cold water, all Springate found were old tires, Gatorade bottles and plastic planters.

He said he was surprised when one student yelled "The crocodile hunter's dead, man," at him while he was wading in the river.

By the end of last week, Springate said he was convinced that there never was a crocodile in the river.

After consulting with a colleague at UBC, Springate believes the water temperature was simply too cold for a crocodilian of any kind to stay active and alive for long.

The baited traps he set out weren't being touched, and the scratches and belly marks by the river could have been made by muskrats, he said.

After three days, he tracked down the people who originally reported the crocodile, and discovered that most reports were simply of splashes in the stream, and those noises could have been made by the beavers, Springate said.

The entire episode took away from the time he spends at the Reptile Refuge, where he is the sole full-time caretaker for numerous snakes, lizards, turtles and crocodiles.

"All I know is, it was a waste of my time," Springate said.

Springate said that aside from the cold weather, it wouldn't be uncommon for a live exotic reptile to be on the loose in the Lower Mainland.

A longtime advocate of tough laws to stamp out the trade in exotic pets, Springate can tell stories of caimans clogging sewer pipes, snakes falling from trees in front of coffee shops and boa constrictors kept in private homes.

"People who have large, man-eating constrictors in their homes are stupid," Springate said. That also applies to people who buy baby caimans, alligators or crocodiles, he said.

The largest crocodylian at the Reptile Refuge right now is Silver, a common caiman who was 2.8 metres long (nine feet, four inches) the last time he was measured. Animals like that start out at just eight inches long when they are sold in the pet trade.


published on 05/04/2007

Source: www.langleyadvance.com/issues07/051207/news/051207nn6.html

Mysterious reptile sought

Reports of lizard-like creatures crop up near Pitt Lake every few years, an outdoorsman says.

by Matthew Claxton

While the crocodile at Trinity Western University may have been non-existent, it piqued the interest of outdoorsman and broadcaster Barrie Alden.

Alden has spent several decades periodically tracking down reports of lizard-like creatures around the Lower Mainland.

"I think this is another sighting," Alden said, before the search was called off. "I'll wait and see what's happening."

Alden is a self-described cryptozoologist, someone who searches for rumoured animals, the existence of which has not been proven. Common targets of cryptozoological interest include Sasquatch, Ogopogo, and the Loch Ness Monster.

Closer to home, Alden believes that an ancient aquatic reptile has survived and is still breeding in the Lower Mainland, particularly around Pitt Lake.

Asked how ancient reptiles survived the last ice age, which saw most of Canada smothered under a mile of ice, Alden said the animals could have retreated to small isolated areas where they could survive.

Most scientists dismiss cryptozoological claims, in the absence of any live animals, dead bodies, or other remains. Alden said mainstream scientists don't like the subject because they are worried about ridicule.

published on 05/04/2007

Source: www.langleyadvance.com/issues07/051207/news/051207nn7.html

[Deleted]

may i ask exactly how "big" these so called lizards of canada's are?
i have quite a few large lizards come in a few times as a rescue, some were found just laying around outside by some people, some of these lizards were, savannah monitors, argentine tegus, and sub adult nile monitors
there is a chance that it can be an argentine black and white tegu
i have a baby in my collection, and they are by far the most intelligent reptiles on the planet, they have a very dark colouring, with a white spots, they are omnivores and hibernates during winter seasons, however some do not hibernate, they grow over 4 feet long and can weigh nearly 20 pounds, they're favourite food in the wild are rodents and fish, although they will eat just about anything that moves, they are by far one of the most hardiest lizards on the planet, i have had people tell me about tegus hunting in the snow down in ohio!!!

gallery.kingsnake.com/data/27969morning.jpg