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Periwinkle Snail Devastating Marshes that Protect Land Against Hurricanes

periwinkle snail

The Louisiana’s marshes are destroying. Along with the worries, people have been blaming oil companies, levees and the burrowing nutria for the phenomenon. But, now the blame is shared by a new culprit — the periwinkle snail. Researchers from Brown and Louisiana State universities are claiming the marble-sized snail as the main culprit.

They claim that the snail is leaving thousands of Gulf of Mexico and eastern U.S. coastal marshes bare mud flats that had been thriving wetlands once. The New Orleans Times-Picayune has reported this. And the loss had affected many areas struck by this year’s record number of hurricanes. It is because since marshes protect land against hurricanes.

‘The snails killed as much as 11 percent of the estimated 100,000 acres of marsh lost in Louisiana during the 2000-01 droughts,’ Brian Silliman, a former Brown researcher and lead author of a study on the snails informed.

Via: Physorg

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