RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The Gi­ant African snail, which is wreak­ing hav­oc with crops in Bar­rack­pore, has now moved to Gol­con­da.

The snails, re­gard­ed as the world’s most de­struc­tive land snails, are car­ri­ers of the rat lung­worm which caus­es menin­gi­tis in hu­mans.

Yet, be­cause of the heavy in­fes­ta­tions, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture says it is no longer do­ing field vis­its. The unit is now ad­vis­ing farm­ers and res­i­dents to try to con­trol the pests them­selves.

One res­i­dent said the pests are mul­ti­ply­ing in huge num­bers near the WASA pump­ing sta­tion at Phase 1 Ridge­wood Gar­dens, Gol­con­da.

“A lot of peo­ple here re­ly on agri­cul­ture to earn a liveli­hood and we are fear­ful that the snails could de­stroy fields and fields of crops,” the res­i­dent said.

In re­sponse to an email from Guardian Me­dia, an agri­cul­tur­al of­fi­cer with the En­to­mol­o­gy Unit Re­search Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture said the gi­ant African snail in­fes­ta­tion has be­come a na­tion­al is­sue.

“It should al­so be not­ed that there is no ‘one-time fix’ so­lu­tion and re­quires con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing and adop­tion of the man­age­ment prac­tices. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries is un­able to car­ry out bait­ing and/or col­lec­tion of snails at this time,” the of­fi­cer said.

The of­fi­cer ad­vised that a list of strate­gies that can be used to con­trol this pest.

The snails, first spot­ted in Diego Mar­tin in 2008, has moved south­ward and have been de­stroy­ing fields of crops in Cu­mo­to, Bar­rack­pore.

Farm­ers have been us­ing met­alde­hyde and sodi­um chlo­ride to con­trol the pests.