Since the end of June, employees of the Department of Agriculture in this sunny southern American state have been inspecting the gardens of New Port Richey, a small town on the west coast where these snails have taken up residence.
This mollusc, which can measure up to 20 centimeters in length, is “an agricultural plague that feeds on more than 500 different types of plants,” explains Jason Stanley, a biologist with this public agency. “We are therefore concerned about its presence in our environment.”
A single giant African snail can lay up to 2,000 eggs a year, Mr Stanley adds, an impressive reproductive rate that makes it a danger to the state’s important agricultural sector.
Snail hunting dogs
A few yards away, Mellon, a Labrador trained to stalk the snail, walks with his master. He goes under a tree, searches in the grass… and when, finally, he locates his target, he sits on it.
With the help of Mellon and another sniffer dog, 1,200 specimens of this invasive species have already been captured in Pasco County. To overcome this destructive snail, the authorities also use metaldehyde, a kind of harmless slug killer for humans and animals, promises the state.
New Port Richey has even been placed under quarantine: no plant can come out of it, to prevent a snail from escaping with it. If the mollusk, which comes from eastern Africa, managed to make it to Florida, it’s likely because it was brought as a pet, authorities said.
Its color is light, unlike most snails of this type with a brownish complexion, a characteristic that makes it “very popular”, notes Jason Stanley.
Sniffer dogs help capture these snails.
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP
Already eradicated twice in Florida
However, this snail can be dangerous for humans. He is a carrier of “the rat lungworm, which can cause meningitis”, continues Jason Stanley.
This parasite, detected among shellfish caught in Pasco County, enters the lungs of rats when they eat a snail, and then spreads through their cough. If a human ingests one of these worms, it travels to the brain, where it can cause meningitis, explains the biologist. The giant African snail has already been eradicated twice, from other parts of Florida, in 1975 and again in 2021.
The last campaign of extermination, in the county of Miami-Dade, had been made at the cost of ten years of effort and 23 million dollars of expenditure.
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