The Portuguese archipelago lives up to its name: the Desertas Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Madeira region, are uninhabited, and therefore constitute a nature reserve suitable for saving endangered species.
This is the case of tiny snails, native to the mountainous island, whose habitat had been destroyed by rats, mice and goats brought to the island by humans, and which had been thought to have disappeared. for almost 100 years, until experts from the Instituto das Florestas e Conservação da Natureza (IFCN) discovered between 2012 and 2017 two small colonies of two species of gastropods, thanks to conservation expeditions.
The 200 specimens found had been taken to zoos in the United Kingdom and France, as part of a breeding program aimed at rapidly increasing their numbers.
Quiet in their shells
And in fact, 1,329 small snails have just been brought back to the archipelago, on the very small island of Bugio, closed to humans since 1990 for the purposes of conserving a fragile ecosystem.
“In just a few months, we managed to master the breeding of Desertas land snails. More importantly: we managed to raise several generations. This was essential, as it allowed us to gain support from other zoos and establish a network, breeding the snails in sufficient numbers to have a chance of saving the species.said Heather Prince, an invertebrate specialist at Chester Zoo who took part in the program.
Each reintroduced snail was marked individually, in order to monitor the development of the species in its natural environment. If successful, other gastropods will be released to increase the number of individuals.
