A well-intentioned water quality team backed by a prominent environmental group may have inadvertently introduced an overwhelmingly pestilent invasive species to Southern California.
That's at the heart of an excellent story from Jill Leovy at the Los Angeles Times yesterday.
Mudsnails now infest the Malibu Creek, Trancas Creek, Ramirez Creek and Solstice Creek watersheds. They've claimed Malibou Lake, Malibu Lagoon and Cold Creek.
In an ironic twist, the spread of the infestation locally may be the result of environmentalists' efforts to improve stream-water quality in the Santa Monica Mountains, an effort [stream restoration expert Mark] Abramson spearheaded.
Equipment used by contractors and volunteers to help test water for groups such as Heal the Bay may have spread the mudsnails from stream to stream. The tiny mollusks cling to gear like fuzz to Velcro. Mudsnail infestations have cropped up where monitoring was completed.
"I wish I could say" it's not from monitoring, "but I can't," Abramson said. "It is really depressing for me. I had a horrible time at first."
Mudsnails are extremely bad news. Tiny but hideously reproductive, so far they have been impossible to control outside their native New Zealand. The tough-minded can learn more here.
No good deed goes unpunished.
That's the hateful-to-contemplate but too-often-true adage that comes to mind.
Attributed to Oscar Wilde, Clare Booth Luce, and various others, it's actually been in currency so long no one has yet tracked down its first utterance, according to the late great word scholar William Safire, among others.
Here's a picture of the bad guys, from the aforelinked informational site put up by a coalition of agencies and environmental groups.
Kit Stolz 