Bring on the garlic and butter

AM - Giant African Snail slips through quarantine

[http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2004/s1029679.htm]

AM - Thursday, 22 January , 2004 08:26:20
Reporter: Louise Willis
DAVID HARDAKER: Well, compared to what's happening in South Africa, it's a small problem, but a problem nonetheless: imagine for a second, a common brown garden snail, and now imagine one of those more than 20 centimetres long.

That's what's been found on the Gold Coast, not far from one of Queensland's most popular nature parks, and the discovery of the world's most destructive land snail has forced quarantine authorities to re-think their inspection procedures, as Louise Willis reports.

LOUISE WILLIS: It's big, and it's bad news – it's the Giant African Snail. One hasn't been seen in Australia for 25 years – that is, until now. A worker at a Gold Coast steel factory came across one this week, and took it to the nearby Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, which in turn alerted authorities.

Chris Adriaansen from Queensland's Department of Primary Industries has been showing off the slimey find.

CHRIS ADRIAANSEN: He is a fairly large, impressive beast.

LOUISE WILLIS: And is he the largest snail you've ever seen?

CHRIS ADRIAANSEN: He is by far the biggest snail that I've ever seen in my life – just doesn't even compare to any size of garden snail that you see. You can step on a garden snail and not know it. If you stepped on this guy, yeah, you'd be walking with a limp for a week.

LOUISE WILLIS: And, where would it have come from?

CHRIS ADRIAANSEN: This one, based on the container traffic that coming into this particular business in the Currumbin Valley, we think that it's probably either from Indonesia or possibly even from China.

LOUISE WILLIS: The DPI and the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service say other giant snails might be in the area and they're also concerned the captured snail may have laid eggs, but intense searches across Currumbin have so far turned up nothing.

A baiting program is being conducted as a precaution, and the captured snail will be destroyed. The last Giant African Snail outbreak was at Gordonvale, near Cairns, in far north Queensland in 1977 – hundreds were found and they took eight months to eradicate.

The snails aren't wanted because they're voracious feeders, and eat hundreds of different types of native plants and commercial crops.

Now, questions are being asked about how this one made it through supposedly tight quarantine restrictions governing the thousands of shipping containers that arrive each day on Australian wharves.

AQIS entomologist Bill Crowe admits his agency may need to be more vigilant.

BILL CROWE: Well, what we can't do is we can't look inside every single one of those 10,000 per day. So things that are low-risk commodities internally, we just don't open those containers, and that's something that we'll have to have a look at after this incident if we can actually trace it back.

DAVID HARDAKER: Bill Crowe from the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, speaking to Louise Willis.


© 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation