Invasion of Big Lagoon
The New Zealand mud snail reproduces like crazy, but is it a threat?
(June 2, 2011) A New Zealand mud snail is a tiny thing, no more than a quarter-inch long, often less. A dime dwarfs it. In fact, a dozen or more of the critters can easily fit on top of a dime.
Harmless, seemingly. And if you really look at them, with their attractively whorled, generally brownish, conical shells, they’re kind of cute.
So why is Keith Bensen, resource manager for Redwood National Park, running around these days as if the sky’s about to fall? He’s not, actually. But the snail does worry him. A lot.
“My job, by law, is to protect the native ecosystem for the American people,” Bensen said recently. “If an invasive species comes in and that ecosystem gets destroyed, then I’m not doing my job.”
The New Zealand mud snail, as its name indicates, comes from south of the equator, so if it’s here in Humboldt County it’s by definition an invasive species. And it is here. In Freshwater Lagoon, Big Lagoon and in the Redwood Creek estuary — not to mention farther north in Lake Earl, in the mouth of the Klamath River and over the border in Oregon’s Rogue River.
It’s a pest in the way ants are pests — a single individual is hardly noticeable, but a swarm can drive you crazy. And thanks to the creature’s remarkable reproductive capabilities, mud-snail populations can reach swarm-like numbers very quickly.
Females don’t need males to impregnate them. They can do it on their own — that is, asexually. They can also reproduce very fast.
According to Darren Ward, an associate professor of fisheries biology at Humboldt State University and a neighbor of Bensen’s, within a year a single snail can produce thousands of offspring. “One invasive snail is all it takes,” Ward said. “They can become super-abundant.”
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