Why 1,329 Snails Were Released on a Remote Island to Save Them from Extinction

we are releasing thousands of snails on this small remote island in the middle of the ocean and that is a really strange thing to do of course so strange that one of our biologists even ended up on the news to try to explain it all but what really makes this special is that when we started this project these snails were so neglected so critically endangered that there were in some cases less than a dozen left for us to find and what was left of their devastated habitat starving hunted by invasives and about to go extinct but that is where we came in and together This brilliant team set out to solve the problem and today is the culmination of that effort we have worked almost 4 years for this

moment and today this little snail and hundreds of its friends will be completing their Journey from the brink of Extinction really and just return to the Wild and in this video today we are here to tell you the story of this Rescue all the Expeditions searching for these snails the breeding programs at the zoos and of course the big moment of their return in force and if I may say in style to live in the Wilds of their native Island once more now the first question people always ask is to many people snails are just a garden pest why are these snails on a remote island in the middle of the ocean so important well like um all species um they have a role to play in the ecosystem and

they're also an important part of biodiversity that I think is worth protecting in its own uh right so I think they have you can say they have intrinsic value as well um and if you look at Extinction rates um in the animal kingdom actually a lot of extinctions are happening uh in species like these land snails in Islands even though people are not aware of this yeah I'm sorry it isn't every day that we end up on the news so I want to milk it a bit but the key points that Thiago mentioned there is a good start for our story because nothing is going extinct quite like these snails you see if you look at all recorded animal extinctions over the past 5 centuries about 53% of them are mollusks and among

this group 71% of extinctions are terrestrial and freshwater mollusks on oceanic islands that is really bad news if you're a name on an oceanic Island and we can trace some of this vulnerability that they have to their evolution on these islands snails that got here stuck on a bird or floating on some wood actually found that they had very few predators and many habitats to choose from so they evolved fewer defensive traits against potential Predators after all why worry when there are so few around they're also not the best at moving around and so they ended up having small ranges and specializing to take advantage of specific habitats that the island had to offer all of this means that they are particularly

vulnerable to new predators and to habitat loss and these poor guys got hit with a pretty bad combo humans cut their forests and rabbits and ghosts destroyed much of the rest of the vegetation and then to make matters worse when times are tough and the rats have no water to drink well they turn to snail smoothie to stay alive and that is what happened here which left our four protagonists jitra kurona D Leana jitra graami and Atlantic K coloid in a really tough spot to the point where they were all thought to be extinct that is until they were rediscovered after 100 years without a sighting by a wonderful Ranger and naturalist called isberto who alerted dinart a malacologist together they learned more

about the snails and realized something needed to be done which is how a coalition came to be formed between ifcn Mossy Earth Chester Bristol and B all zoos The Fellowship of the snails the first goal of this team was to organize an expedition to locate the four populations and then to secure enough snails to breathe them in captivity we started off by searching for geometra graami in the last known location where they were spotted on this patch here on the Eastern side of the island I'm here in Fang Grand which is where we came to look for jitra graani it's this tiny snail species that can be found nowhere else on earth except for this tiny patch here uh in Zer Grand we have at least 3 to

four hours searching in this area this is a big area although small in this tiny Island but it's a big area as far as L nail is concerned so we hopefully we'll find our 15 to 20 specimens that will enable us to start our breeding captive breeding program and we were lucky to start with what turned out to be the easiest ones to find so it's uh associated with this uh this Fern which is found in this area and usually we find it here in the lift Fleer and it's just this tiny little snail there in a few hours we found dozens of them so we had more than enough to take some with us which was a great start to this project then the next day we went searching for disla on this slope here in the center of the island which was its last known location

so we're here searching for disla Liliana and so far we only found juveniles they're quite hard to find and they're only known from this patch of fern here this search proved a lot tougher and there were some bad signs here you can see the bite marks of uh domestic rat domestic mice the mush musl uh the mice usually uses the snail not as a food source but mainly as a water source uh since this is we are entering in the dry season in the summer season they tend to be more veres against the L SS the hours passed and things were not looking good but then isberto the ranger that originally rediscovered these snails to begin with hit that mother load of snails

that was two species in the bag and the next day full of confidence we set out to find our third target of the trip Atlantica katto which was last seen in the south of the island uh this is a very steep descent we know the population it's only a tiny area more or less 20 square m uh it's it's probably below 60 to 80 m from this area where we are standing on please take a moment to visualize just how little these snails have left 25 square m there are bedrooms bigger than that so we've been searching for Atlantica col here for about 3 hours and all we got was two juveniles that are still alive and all the rest were dead shells so it seems like um yeah this population is really on the brink here

and that means that there's not enough individuals for us to take with us for the captive breeding program so in the final two days of the Expedition we tried to go for jitra kurona which was last found here on the western side of this Ridge and the path there was a lot harder so we have just been dropped off this beach here by the boat and uh we're heading up to camp for One Night in an area that's at the top and this is the path we need to take to get there so that's the valley we've just hiked with all the food and water and just arriving at the shelter they did a thorough search the next day but found only two individuals which they duly marked and left there to keep track of them in the future as

expected it was really complicated very difficult to find them H it is very dry at the moment the soil and The Sensation that we have is that probably we are we came too late in the season so at the end of the first expedition we managed to confirm the location and crucially of course the existence of all species which is a big deal but we also managed to collect enough individuals to start the breeding programs for geometri grab and D Lilian on the next Expedition the team went straight to Atlantica to give it another try and it quickly became clear that it was a different kind of day you T set with the laugh says it all that is another snail in the back nevertheless the next few days jitra Corona still

eluded us as again we only found two live individual but we kept going on the next Expedition we found two of them again so still not enough and the real highlight of that trip was the rescue of a baby monk seal found stranded and alone if you want to see that story by the way we've added it to our field notes Channel where we post regular on theground updates from our various projects including also an Extended video about the first snail release you're about to see and after this more and more search Expeditions followed until finally in 2023 on a fresh spring morning we had them that was 2 years of searching often in challenging conditions but to have this result it was all worth it getting the

snails is one thing once that part is done a whole new operation begins that is far from simple what it was a little surprise it was the number of Founders and that's is the critical point you know say only just a few 20 individuals you know you can only put it in yes in your hand this is what is left to be a part of the breeding program and that is exciting but as well as the most scary element part when you working in dangerous pieces like you have the pressure these has to be safe and despite having a lot of data from our various data loggers figuring out what they need is also quite tricky but the challenge is this the optimal habitat that the animals are living or that is

the only one that is left so sometimes we presume this is ideal conditions and in fact is that the animals is just hanging on the cliff it's just Sav me but this is not my habitat and we don't know until you try that involves different type of temperature humidity the diet how you keep the animals you will be exposed with plants without plants under the Rocks all the things you have to do with Tryon Arrow but you only have 20 in your bucket and the team kept tricking all of these parameters to a really detailed level you can get a little we tunnel vision sometimes every day you know you go in you check temperatures on a plastic probe you're changing slices of sweet potato

everything's to because these snails are so precious you know they're critically endangered we only had 23 we wanted to be really careful and precise with how we looked after them so you know to the point where was we have a protocol for how thinly we slice sweet potato and things like that so when every day you're you're they're in a glass uh Viv that's this wide we've got a substrate that's this thin we make sure the dimensions are right with the substrate um the ratio of sand to soil but bit by bit the results started to show I mean look at these beautiful tiny hatchlings they are the cutest thing and when you know their background it just makes it even more beautiful

when you start seeing the first success that the animals start breeding C ex that's the bigest excitement what we call sometimes the breed by luck you needed to do it one more time it maybe it was just uh without under control so when you repeated and you see new clutches then you start thinking yeah we get on the tune we get in the right conditions that these animals start breeding the populations fluctuated up and down throughout this process but they kept growing and being stable enough to start considering some releases which I think shows the real level of expertise and professionalism that the teams at the zoos displayed to be able to tackle such a difficult task and by 2024 the numbers looked more like this

now that is a big difference to kick off the reintroductions we will be releasing jitra Corona and dis and the other species will follow in future releases before the snails were shipped to Madera the geometr were painted with a splash of UV reflective paints to make them easier to find at night when we go survey and then the dish Clues which are bigger also received a DOT marking them with a different color for each release location and when they arrived in Madera each one was fit with a little number so they can be tracked properly and thus fashionably dressed they are ready to be released now at this stage in the story I always like to tell you about our Mossy Earth membership that

funds this and all our other projects but this time before this big moment I want to give the word to dinart who can best explain what you our M Earth members have meant to him and his work for I think what dinart says here is key it is true that we contributed a reliable and steady stream of funding to this project but I think that the biggest gift that you are members offered this project was simply an open mind and so now is the moment we will be releasing these snails into nature and it's just very exciting for me to me this highlights how we have a community of people who also care about things that are perhaps not the most sexy perhaps not the most appealing but are just very impactful that we have

these unique unque projects that tackle forgotten and neglected issues and so it's only because of our Moss Earth members that we're able to focus on these things so if you're not yet a member please consider becoming one at moss. Earth the reintroduction sites we picked were here in Bou the smaller Island to the South and we did so because from the fossil record we know that the snails existed here in the past before going extinct probably due to habitat loss due to invasives however as this island is smaller the Rangers managed to get it cleared of invasives and the vegetation has improved greatly so here you can see what a difference it makes to remove and eradicate the goats so on this island

after the goats were removed all this vegetation started to come back and if you put your hand in the soil here it's amazing it's quite wet and that just goes to show uh how different the conditions are here and it's why we hope that the snails will have a better time adjusting to this area than to Zer Grand where invasives are still a big problem all the partners for this project managed to join for this first release but we also had a new face join the team his name is Umberto and he will be the one coming here every month over the next few years to monitor these released populations and his inclusion is also a big moment because he is the son of is isber the naturalist Ranger who started

all of this with his curiosity it's the passing of the torch to a new generation which is really important for the longevity of this work so after arriving in Bou and doing a bit of scouting the team set up camp and prepared for the first release which was done just after Nightfall so we are finally releasing the snails here it's pretty incredible after so many years uh searching for them uh then all the teams growing them uh in captivity and now here we are it's a pretty crazy scene uh red head torches so that we don't disturb the endemic birds that Nest on this island and we have the UV lights out so that we can easily spot the snails uh after we've released them and uh yeah it's just very

exciting finally seeing them uh getting out uh into their habitat so the dhana we're trying to place them under the Rocks that's where uh the habitat we find them in Zer Grand and geometra were taking particular care to put them where there's some organic matter because we always find it um in the middle of this sort of dead uh um plant leaves and things like that so yeah it's very exciting and we're finally getting the snails out in the wild seeing this imagery is surreal for me because much like you our Mossy Earth members I have never set a foot on this island as Thiago did all the filming and I have never seen one of these snails in person but I still feel such a close connection with their journey and the

work that it took to get them here it just puts a huge smile on my face to see these surreal neon colored images of their return to the wild it's an appropriately dazzling environment a spectacular setting for what is in fact a really beautiful and important moment so now after a reasonable night sleep and just before the sun gets up uh we're heading out to check on the snails we released last night uh just to see how they're doing um and uh we'll we'll take this opportunity just to have a check in uh before we head down and bit by bit as the sun started Rising the team found them going about their new life slowly exploring the cracks and crevices of their new home bringing hope

wherever they went that this place might continue to enjoy their beautiful presence for centuries to come and that is something you can be very proud of achieving until next time cheers