Helping rare Bermuda snails survive

Bermuda land snail

Mon 28 Nov 2005

Rare species goes at snails‘ pace to beat extinction

RARE snails flown to London Zoo in an attempt to save them from extinction have successfully reproduced.

A colony of 56 Bermudan land snails were brought to the UK in February after the native population fell to critically low levels.

Just 300 remained after being hunted to the edge of extinction by predatory snails and ants.

After successful breeding there are now about 70 adults and 157 juveniles at the zoo in Regent’s Park.

The Bermuda Natural History Museum, which had been monitoring the snails, asked the zoo for help after numbers among the single surviving colony fell dramatically.

A programme was set up to establish a thriving population of the snails away from their natural habitat and the predators who were hunting them.

Experts at the zoo have also taken the opportunity to improve their knowledge of the creatures to help conserve them.

They have been monitoring egg batches and hatchling snails to clarify average clutch size, incubation periods, time taken for snails to reach maturity and life expectancy.