UK Zoos Build 'Ark Populations' to Save Rare One-Lake Snail — SkimNews
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- Glutinous snails (Myxas glutinosa), one of Europe's rarest species, exist in the UK only in Llyn Tegid—Wales' largest natural lake in Eryri National Park—after being driven to extinction across England by polluted water and habitat loss.
- Ian Hughes has been wading into Llyn Tegid under licence from Natural Resources Wales since 2014, then breeding snails at his home in Llanarth, Ceredigion; after four months he achieved the first-ever documented observation of their eggs.
- Wingham Wildlife Park in Kent received 24 glutinous snails from the Hughes family, with Askham Bryan Wildlife Park in York, Longleat in Wiltshire, and Dudley and Chester zoos also establishing captive breeding populations.
- The effort is part of a £60m UK government-backed scheme to protect rare species, coordinated by BIAZA, with the Freshwater Habitats Trust scouting suitable water bodies for eventual reintroduction.
- Nicky Needham, BIAZA's head of species management, said researchers aim to reintroduce snails to the wild within three years, pending work on their ecology, husbandry, and genetics.
Why it matters: Five UK zoos are now breeding insurance populations of a species reduced to a single Welsh lake, and with climate change flagged as an escalating threat, the stated three-year reintroduction window is a tight race to restore the snail—an indicator of healthy waterways—to English habitats where it has already been lost.
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