"KAPLAN, La. — Josh Courville has harvested crawfish his whole life, but these days, he’s finding a less welcome catch in some of the fields he manages in southern Louisiana.
Snails. Big ones.
For every crawfish Courville dumps out of a trap, three or four snails clang onto the boat’s metal sorting table. About the size of a baseball when fully grown, apple snails stubbornly survive all kinds of weather in fields, pipes and drainage ditches and can lay thousands of bubblegum-colored eggs every month.
“It’s very disheartening,” Courville said. “The most discouraging part, actually, is not having much control over it.”
Apple snails are just one example of how invasive species can quickly become a nightmare for farmers."
Melina Walling and Joshua A. Bickel report for the Associated Press February 6, 2026.
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