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A highly invasive species of snail has continued to overwhelm the Florida community by eating stucco off houses and consuming almost 500 species of plants, Business Insider reports.
The Giant African Snail “can grow as big as a tennis shoe” and was discovered four years ago in Miami after its initial eradication in the 1960s. The state has spent $10.8 million on its Giant African Snail eradication program since 2011 but “there is still no end in sight,” according to Business Insider.
“The fact is they’re a human and animal health threat, and they’re a threat to Florida’s agriculture,” said state agriculture department spokesman, Mark Fagan, to Business Insider. “We can’t let the population continue.”
Not only are the snails threatening plant species, but they could also carry a parasitic worm that causes a rare form of meningitis that is dangerous to humans. Officials are able to kill the snails 95 to 100 percent of the time with a molluscicide containing metaldehyde, but the snail “sometimes climbs trees to avoid the chemical pellets on the ground,” said Florida Department of Agriculture scientist, Mary Yong Cong, to Business Insider.
The snails can also reproduce very easily “and can lay up to 1,200 eggs per year … each about the size of a Tic Tac,” according to Business Insider. Authorities believed “they had a good handle on them last year” but found 5,000 live snails in 2014 “around a single house in the wealthy Miami suburb of Pinecrest.”
So what is being done to stop these slimy intruders?
Officials have made a snail-sighting hotline and will send out workers to clear them out of properties. A new phase has used “sniffer dogs on the snails trail” and two Labradors are now employed by the Department of Agriculture. 158,000 snails were removed within the past four years, but officials cannot confirm their eradication until there is no detection of the snails for two-straight years.
Read more at businessinsider.com
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