Florida officials trying to get rid of the Giant African Land Snail. Reuters reported that the snail is one of the most destructive in the world. The state plans to use Labrador Retrievers to help get rid of the snails that have swept through the Miami area.
"On Wednesday, officials said that since the start of an aggressive extermination campaign they have collected 128,000 of the snails, which can grow as big as rats and devour plants as well as stucco and plaster in a hunt for calcium they need to grow their big shells. In large numbers, the snails can cause extensive structural damage to buildings," reported Reuters.
Adam Putnam, Florida Agriculture Commissioner said to Reuters, "We see a lot of strange things in Florida and this one makes the top of the list. It is a very serious pest."
To date 6 million has been spent in getting rid of the snails which carry a parasitic rat lungworm which can cause illness in humans.
.To get rid of the snails people have to hunt for them and search for them using bait and chemical treatments. Now, dogs will help them.
"They're very good at detecting the Giant African Land Snail," said Richard Gaskalla, head of plant industry at the Florida Agriculture Department to Reuters. "So we're building four-legged technology into this program as quickly as we can."
"Since making their first appeared in 2011, the state has vanquished nearly 130,000 of the pesky snails, which eat not only 500 kinds of shrubbery and produce, but also stucco - an essential building material for Florida homes and offices," reported NBC News.
In nature, the snails have no natural predator, which makes it an issue in iradicating them.
"The number of detections this last year were in the thousands; now they are down to around 200 to 300 a week," said Gaskalla to Reuters.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
