Tracy Menzies, a Saanich real‑estate agent, noticed far fewer slugs this summer and saw her strawberries turn "absolutely beautiful." She credits the sudden appearance of European wall lizards, which have been darting across her garden and eating the slugs.

The lizards are not native. According to Gavin Hanke, curator of vertebrate zoology at the Royal B.C. Museum, there are now an estimated 800,000 to one million of them in British Columbia, almost all on Vancouver Island, and they have spread as far north as Campbell River – about 220 km from Victoria.

Scientists trace the boom to a deliberate release of just twelve lizards in 1970 after Rudy’s Pet Park, a small roadside zoo in Central Saanich, closed. From that single point the population exploded, moving roughly 100 metres each year, but also hitch‑hiking on cars, firewood, building supplies and even hay bales.

These lizards are omnivores. As Hanke explains, they eat insects, spiders, slugs, ants, termites, earwigs, mason bees, honeybees, bumblebees, fruit and other invertebrates, and they also kill baby garter snakes. Their daily meals are therefore reducing many invertebrate groups across the island.

There is no official control program. Nicholas Wong, science and operations manager with the Invasive Species Council of B.C., says the best defence is a "really boring" garden – a plain, closely‑cut lawn that offers little shelter for the lizards.

The rapid spread means residents may enjoy fewer garden pests, but the broader impact could be a noticeable decline in native insects, spiders and young snakes. Living with the lizards will require community‑wide garden choices and an acceptance that the island’s wildlife balance has already shifted.