New Zealand Mud Snail Alert!!

Lots of folks from the Ferdinand Hayden Chapter area will be going up to the Green River, Idaho and Yellowstone this spring. The streams in these areas have been heavily infested with New Zealand Mud Snails and could be easily transported on waders and boats to the Roaring Fork, Eagle and upper Colorado Rivers.

Don’t let that happen!!! Clean your gear and make sure there are no snails on the boats!

The snails are a tiny, and we mean really small, invasive species from New Zealand. They don’t hurt fish directly, but they can scour the river bed of all the organic matter that the bugs depend on, and the trout depend on the bugs! They breed like rabbits, don’t need sex to reproduce and are pretty much born pregnant! So any snails accidentally brought back will start an infestation.

Jeff Dysart will have a much fuller article in the next newsletter, going into the NZMS biology and what a threat they are to our rivers and streams in the next issue.