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Help From Martinique in Containing African Snail
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Help From Martinique in Containing African Snail
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Contact: John Emmanuel Thursday,
October 12, 2000
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Officials of the Ministry of Agriculture are following the lead of their
counterparts in Martinique in their latest attempts at dealing with the Giant
African Snail. Director of Agricultural Services Julius Polius says as a result of a recent trip to Martinique, a pesticide called MetaDex was identified and is to be shipped to St. Lucia by next week to boost the eradication efforts. The pesticide will form the central plank in the Ministry’s strategy for dealing with the pest and is believed to pose no real health or environmental risk. “There is no health risk. The chemical is something that is common to St. Lucia and besides, people have bought slug bait in the past in all forms. This chemical is strong enough to kill the snail but not strong enough to pose an environmental hazard. Then the composition of the product is such that it is water resistant which means that water will hit it but it will not get washed away into the waterways. It remains intact such that, as the snails eat it they die and therefore from an environmental point of view we see no contamination taking place and we think it’s relatively safe,” said Polius. Agricultural
officials say efforts to contain the snail in the northern portion of the island
have been fairly successful, although reports of sightings in the Marigot area
have surfaced. The Ministry of
Agriculture is aiming for total eradication of the Giant African Snail. However
experts believe that that can only be achieved via community participation.
According to Mr. Polius, “You would recall earlier on I mentioned that it was going to be a multi-faceted approach, that of physically taking up the snails as well as poisoning them with chemicals. At the moment, in-house, we are doing a number of things like preparing flyers that would inform people. We are also preparing a billboard to warn people that they are entering an area where snails exist and that they need to be careful that they do not carry it out of there. The fact is the snail moves by people carrying it from one place to another. It’s a hitchhiker as it doesn’t move quickly on its own.” The
snails are to be baited with the chemical on two consecutive occasions, which is
consistent with the snail’s life cycle. |
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