An­na-Lisa Paul

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of Gi­ant African Snails have in­vad­ed agri­cul­tur­al lands south of the Blue Wa­ters fac­to­ry at Or­ange Grove, Tacarigua, and are now sweep­ing west, threat­en­ing farm­ers in Ma­coya and fur­ther afield.Col­lect­ing bags of snails from Paw-Paw DMin­istry moves to help Tacarigua farm­ers as...

rive, Or­ange Grove yes­ter­day, Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture em­ploy­ees said the prob­lem was "crit­i­cal," as they point­ed to ba­by snails lit­ter­ing the road­way, wa­ter-ways, riv­er banks and near­by veg­etable fields.

At one pump­kin field, work­er Joshua Suri­jlal gen­tly sep­a­rat­ed the pump­kin leaves as he point­ed to a clus­ter of snails at the base of the plant. He said work­ers have been "bait­ing" the sur­round­ing area for the last few days, spec­u­lat­ing that the snails may have been brought in­to the area about two years ago based on the size of the ones cur­rent­ly be­ing col­lect­ed.

"Af­ter the heavy rains in Diego Mar­tin two years ago, it could have been trans­ferred with ma­te­r­i­al and brought in by per­sons mov­ing soil and oth­er de­bris," he sug­gest­ed.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view at the min­istry's Ex­per­i­men­ta­tion Di­vi­sion in Mau­si­ca yes­ter­day, di­rec­tor Deo Nand­lal said the snails were brought in­to the coun­try in 2008 by an Ital­ian na­tion­al liv­ing in Alyce Glen, Diego Mar­tin. At the time, the man was re­port­ed­ly rear­ing it for con­sump­tion, but the pop­u­la­tion bal­looned and be­gan spread­ing in the area be­fore mov­ing fur­ther to West­moor­ings and Care­nage.

He ad­mit­ted the snails, which are na­tive to Africa, could eas­i­ly be spread through the move­ment of garbage, tree/grass cut­tings, wa­ter, re­moval of soil, ve­hi­cles and ma­te­r­i­al trans­ferred from af­fect­ed ar­eas.

He said oth­er ar­eas where they had been de­tect­ed in­clud­ed Aranguez and St. Au­gus­tine. He sur­mised that the cur­rent snail pop­u­la­tion could eas­i­ly have washed down in the D'Abadie Riv­er, which bor­ders the in­fest­ed agri­cul­tur­al lands to the east.

As­sur­ing that they are com­mit­ted to erad­i­cat­ing the is­sue, deputy di­rec­tor Re­search and Crop Pro­tec­tion Sub-Di­vi­sion, Deanne Ram­roop, said a task force had been set up since 2009 to ad­dress the prob­lem. How­ev­er, both she and Nand­lal agreed that en­force­ment of leg­is­la­tion was a prob­lem due to a num­ber of fac­tors. The snail is a no­ti­fi­able pest that car­ries a $5,000 fine with it for fail­ure to re­port it to the au­thor­i­ties.

Cit­ing a lack of hu­man re­sources as well as pro­ce­dur­al is­sues, Nand­lal said bud­get cuts had se­vere­ly re­strict­ed ef­forts to launch a wide­spread pub­lic cam­paign.

Ram­roop said they had been busy scout­ing, bait­ing, col­lect­ing live/dead snails and in­cin­er­at­ing them dur­ing the last two weeks.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns that the pres­ence of rat lung worm in the snails in­creased the po­ten­tial to spread menin­gi­tis to hu­mans, Ram­roop said the Min­istry of Health was part of the task force and was re­spon­si­ble for test­ing.

She said to date, "we have had no such val­i­da­tion by the Min­istry of Health."

The task force is ex­pect­ed to meet to­mor­row to dis­cuss the way for­ward.