An amazing discovery of a little button-sized snail, believed to be extinct and lost forever, was found alive in an alleyway around a decade ago. Just recently, in conservation efforts, the Bermuda snail species is now classified as “safe and secure”, with experts describing the moment as “once in a career.”

The extraordinary success was announced on February 7th, and achieved through a partnership between the government of Bermuda, a conservation researcher from the Canada-based organization Biolinx Environmental Research, and England’s Chester Zoo. Where thousands of Bermuda snails were carefully bred before being returned to Bermuda. (Last sentence is a fragment)

“It’s every conservationist’s dream to help save a whole species – and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” said Tamas Papp, one of the invertebrates managers at Chester Zoo.

As life-changing as it is to say, six colonies of the released snails have successfully established in Bermuda, an archipelago situated in the north Atlantic Ocean, which was confirmed by an assessment of how our reborn snail friends are doing, which is forthcoming in Oryx.

“It is remarkable to think we only began with less than 200 snails and have now released over 100,000,” said Dr. Mark Outerbridge, a Wildlife Ecologist at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Bermuda, speaking about the hardship all the conservationists worked for.

To hopefully boost the chances of greater population numbers, an expert group of scientists and keepers at Chester Zoo had the opportunity to be entrusted with several snails with the hope of succeeding in off-site breeding and being safely released into the wild.

It’s always great to hear a species thrive, especially out of ‘extinction’, big or small, and even button-sized.