250 Dollars - Elizabeth II Banded Iguana

Fiji's 1978 gold conservation series was issued under a UN-backed program that funded wildlife protection efforts directly through numismatic sales — the Banded Iguana issue being among the flagship pieces. The Crested Iguana, misidentified in early documentation as the same species, was not formally distinguished from the Banded until herpetological surveys conducted around this period clarified the taxonomy. Both were already under severe pressure from mongoose predation, itself a consequence of the ill-considered 19th-century introduction of Indian mongooses to control rat populations in the cane fields.