Giant snail invasion.(Brief article)

0 Comments | Caribbean Update, December, 2006

Ravenous giant snails that emerge from the ground by night are thriving on Barbados, destroying crops and prompting calls for the government to eliminate them, reports AP (Nov. 8, 2006). A recent nocturnal survey found hundreds of thousands of African snails--which are often about the size of a human hand--swarming the central parish of St.

George, the country's agricultural heartland, where farmers complained of damage to sugar cane, bananas, papayas and other crops. Volunteers sprayed government-supplied pesticides in gullies and other cool, low-lying areas where the snails are believed to breed, venturing out after dark to catch the snails as they emerge from spending the day underground. The snails are known to consume as many as 500 different plants and can...