Posted on 11/05/2007 6:01:28 PM PST by llevrok
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - A tiny snail loathed by Australian grain growers has invaded Tacoma's Tideflats area.
Agriculture officials worry that some of the thousands of Mediterranean snails that have been found on a peninsula between the Hylebos and Blair waterways will hitch rides on trucks or trains to Eastern Washington, where wheat, barley and hay are major crops.
Native to Europe, the Mediterranean snail has been known to gum up combines and repel livestock.
In late October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture told more than a dozen Tideflats property owners to cut brush and spread snail bait on nearly 170 acres. If they don't comply within 25 days, the department may do the work and bill them.
So far, the snails haven't moved beyond the Tideflats, where they were first discovered nearly two years ago. Since then, agriculture officials have counted thousands of snails.
Nobody knows how or exactly when the snails landed in Tacoma, but Agriculture Department officials say the likely route was international trade.
"It's been a kind of an uphill battle to convince people this is a large enough threat that action really needs to be taken," said Jim Marra, the scientist in charge of the state's efforts to control the snails.
Some businesses, such as chemical producer Graymont Western U.S. Inc., say the federal order to kill snails isn't likely to present much of a hardship. Others say they can't meet the deadline.
"We just physically cannot accomplish that in the time period," said Bill Elmer, environmental manager at American Construction Co., a marine contractor headquartered on the Hylebos Waterway.
Elmer said he'll likely make a formal request for relief. He's assigned an equipment operator to clear a couple of acres now choked with Himalayan blackberries and construction debris, but the waste is piling up and he's running out of room.
Clinton Campbell, the U.S. Department of Agriculture official who delivered the order, said his agency is willing to work with property owners.
"We are just trying to reduce cover and hiding places for the snail," he said. "The good thing is that this particular infestation is limited at this point and the idea is to keep it that way."
In Australia, snails caused farmers to lose money on the export of contaminated barley in the 1980s. If the snail isn't controlled, something similar could happen here, Marra said.
In November 2005, state Agriculture Department biologists were looking for exotic wood-boring beetles when they spotted the snail in Tacoma.
This is the second time federal officials have mounted a campaign to eradicate Mediterranean snails in the United States.
The first discovery in the U.S. was at a Defense Department site in North Carolina in 1999, where snails occupied about 25 acres and were subsequently wiped out, said John Lundberg, a Washington Department of Agriculture spokesman.
The Tacoma solution is modeled on a similar effort at the port of Detroit. Starting in 2000, officials there targeted four different invasive snails. They are still trying to get rid of them, Marra said. He predicted multiple pesticide applications will be needed in Tacoma.
"Hopefully, we'll eradicate this thing in maybe three years or so," he said.
Most of the snail-infested properties are publicly owned, either by the city or the Port of Tacoma. Both city and port officials said they will comply with the eradication order. Port officials already have offered to store and destroy vegetation removed from neighboring properties.
The infestation is particularly bad on a 17-acre parcel known as the Hylebos marsh. The land is owned by Tacoma Power, which has authorized the Port of Tacoma - which intends to buy the parcel - to rid snails from the property, said Russell Post, the utility's environmental compliance manager.
They might rent a herd of goats to eat briers and other low-lying vegetation before workers spread snail bait, Post said.
The eradication order was timed to fit with the habits of the snails, which feed voraciously in the fall, then reproduce. Every year, mature snails lay hundreds of eggs. Marra said the plan is to spread the pesticide before the eggs are laid.
The snail-eradication effort has the support of Leslie Ann Rose, senior policy analyst for Citizens for a Healthy Bay, an environmental stewardship group.
"We are a major port, the seventh-largest container port in North America. We are always at risk from these kinds of things," she said. "This is something we cannot afford not to address."
Bush’s fault. Global warming. Halliburton. Cheney. Rove. Ricky and Lucy.
“The Tacoma solution is modeled on a similar effort at the port of Detroit. Starting in 2000, officials there targeted four different invasive snails. They are still trying to get rid of them,”
Yes use the method that has failed. Love our government.
Let us export them as gourmet delight to the frogs.
I love escargot.
So the Banana slugs known in the PNW get to live.
Dang they eat everything.
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