Well said, Tim...

I want to add that there is another consequence of introducing live snails
to areas where they do not naturally exist; this may be more of an
intellectual harm, so to speak, but I personally find it quite
objectionable. Intentional or unintentional intoroduction of a snail (or any
other species) to a new area could permanently alter the natural historical,
in other words, evolutionary, record of that area, & consequently, could
make it very difficult for future scientists to figure out what happened in
the past. For example, Pilsbry mentions that early in the 20th century
someone, whose name I can't recall now, introduced some Cerion species from
Cuba or some other island to some of the Florida Keys where this species
hadn't existed prior to that. I don't know if this species still exists in
the introduced areas, but suppose it did & suppose nobody had told us about
this introduction & suppose you were doing your PhD thesis on the
distribution & evolution of that particular Cerion species. It is not
difficult to imagine how distorted your conclusions would be. Because of
this reason I object to the relocation of species even over very short
distances, unless it is done to save a species from extinction. Land snails
do not disperse very far on their own. Consequently, subtle genetic
differences may develop between populations separated by only a few hundred
meters even if the shells look the same. Let's try to keep the Nature the
way it is as much as we can.

Aydin

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tim Pearce [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 12:22 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Alien snail invaders
>
>
>Dear Conch-L,
>   I just responded to an individual who asked about smuggling
>land snails
>into the USA as a pet. Below is an edited version of my
>response to explain
>why we should all be concerned about controlling the
>introduction of Alien
>invaders.
....