Author: Jeffrey Sorensen, Invertebrate Wildlife Program Manager, Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD)

Jeff is the “Snail Guy” for Arizona and has been with AZGFD for over 33 years as a wildlife and fisheries biologist. He is also a volunteer rappelling instructor for the AWF’s Becoming an Outdoors-Woman workshops.

If you spot what looks like pink bubble gum along shoreline vegetation and rocks at your local pond or river, you most likely have found apple snail eggs.

Apple snails are large freshwater snails of the genus Pomacea, originally from South America, Central America, and Florida.

Years ago in Arizona, these snails were sold as pets for home aquariums. Unfortunately, someone had illegally dumped their unwanted pet apple snails into the lower Verde River around 2009. Since then, those apple snails have become well established in the lower Salt River and the canals and urban lakes of the Phoenix metropolitan area. A new infestation of these snails was recently documented in Silverbell Lake in the Tucson area.

Apple snails are highly invasive, with female snails capable of producing thousands of young each year. They adapt well to our waters and may outcompete our native snail populations, which are an important food source for many fish and wildlife. Most of our fish, water birds, amphibians, and reptiles don’t find apple snails very tasty, so there is little to no predation pressure on these large snails.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department is working with the Tonto National Forest, OdySea Aquarium, Sealife Aquarium, the Phoenix Zoo’s Trailblazers Program, and dedicated volunteers to help survey and combat apple snails in our local waters. By smearing or knocking the pink egg masses from shoreline vegetation and rocks into the water, we help reduce the number of young apple snails. The snail eggs will drown if submerged. Juvenile and adult apple snails can be netted from shallow, warm waters and properly disposed of in trash bags.

We recommend that you wash your hands after handling any apple snails or eggs. The snails are known to carry a parasite that causes rat lungworm disease, which can infect humans. We also ask the public not to release unwanted pets into the wild. It’s illegal, and it causes more harm to our fish and wildlife that live in those waters.

To see some of this important work in the field, check out the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s educational video at the button below:

Save our snails! Invasive Apple Snails and what we can do about them

Want to get involved? You can assist AZGFD biologists with monitoring for native land snails on your own time! Learn more at the button below:

Report Native Snail Sighting through iNaturalist