The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­sources, the En­vi­ron­ment, and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment is seek­ing vol­un­teers to help erad­i­cate the Gi­ant African Snail (G.A.S).

In a so­cial me­dia post, the Di­vi­sion said its Erad­i­ca­tion Team will vis­it var­i­ous ar­eas be­tween Jan­u­ary 27 and 31. “Come out to vol­un­teer, with closed-toe footwear and a torch light. More eyes equals more snails in­ter­cept­ed,” the re­lease said. In­ter­est­ed per­sons can What­sApp the Plant Pro­tec­tion Hot­line at 482-7528.

The an­nounce­ment comes as the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries plans to rein­tro­duce a boun­ty pro­gramme for G.A.S col­lec­tion af­ter a suc­cess­ful run in 2023 from Jan­u­ary 16 to Feb­ru­ary 9.

“We are still work­ing out the lo­gis­tics to roll out that par­tic­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty,” said Di­rec­tor of Ex­ten­sion Train­ing and In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Tere­sa Rose­mond.

Dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) ses­sion on pest in­fes­ta­tions last week, Rose­mond re­vealed the Min­istry col­lect­ed over 5,000 kg of snails dur­ing the last boun­ty pro­gramme, pay­ing $27,000 in re­wards. The snails were pri­mar­i­ly found in St. George West and Ca­roni coun­ties. “If you do the maths, we col­lect­ed over 120,000 snails in that short pe­ri­od,” she said.

The Min­istry plans to in­tro­duce boun­ties in all coun­ties us­ing the same two-week time­frame. “The goal is to re­move the snail,” Rose­mond said, adding that satel­lite ac­cu­mu­la­tion ar­eas will be es­tab­lished for col­lec­tion.

The Gi­ant African Snail re­mains a no­ti­fi­able pest un­der the Plant Pro­tec­tion Act. Prop­er­ty own­ers are legal­ly re­quired to re­port its pres­ence, al­though no en­force­ment ac­tions have been record­ed to date.