The discovery in a county of Florida (USA) of a specimen of the giant African land snail, an invasive species that can cause meningitis in humans, has led to the imposition of a quarantine in the area by local authorities.
According to local media reports this Sunday, the discovery in New Port Richey, in western Florida, of a giant African land snail has forced the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) to impose a quarantine in the area and to start a treatment of the land with pesticides.
According to this state agency, this species is “one of the most harmful snails in the world and consumes at least 500 different types of plants” so its presence could be “devastating” for local farmers.
These snails “also represent a serious risk to human health by carrying the lungworm the rat, which is known to cause meningitis in humans”, according to the FDACS.
With the quarantine order, the state agency wants to prevent residents from coming into contact, moving and releasing into the wild to these gastropod molluscs, which can measure up to eight inches (20 centimeters) in length.
Residents who spot one of these snails are asked to alert local authorities.
This species of snail, which can produce up to 2.500 eggs a year and whose importation without a special permit is prohibited in the United States, has been exterminated in the past up to two times, the last one in Miami-Dade County, in the southeast of the state, where it was discovered in 550 and declared eradicated ten years later.
The state agency plans to exterminate these snails by means of metaldehyde-based pesticides that will be sprayed on the to area for the next three years.
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