Partula snail

One of our biggest conservation success stories at RZSS involves one of our smallest animals - the Partula snail. We have been helping to restore wild populations of Partula since 1984, actively breeding thousands of snails at Edinburgh Zoo and releasing them to the wild.

Many species of Partula snail became extinct on the islands of French Polynesia in the 1990s after the carnivorous Rosy wolf snail (Euglandina rosea), normally found in the southern USA, was introduced onto the islands to help control the previously introduced giant African land snail (Achatina fulica) - but the predator preferred .the tiny endemic Partula snails instead. Not only did this harm the islands’ fragile forest ecosystem, as the snails are important vegetation recyclers, but the snails have also been a huge loss for Polynesian culture.

The last few surviving individuals of several Partula species were rescued in the early 1990s by a couple of UK zoos led by the Zoological Society of London and including Edinburgh Zoo.  This was the start of the international conservation breeding programme – now a collaboration between 15 zoos worldwide which care for 15 species and sub-species, the majority of which are classed by the IUCN as extinct in the wild. This long-term zoo population formed the source group to begin re-populating the Islands.

Since 2015, RZSS has been one of several organisations that have together reintroduced over 24,000 Partula snails onto French Polynesian islands, with each year’s release painted with a dot of a different coloured animal-friendly ‘snail varnish’. In the last two years the paint has been glow-in-the-dark, so that their individual progress can be monitored with the help of a UV torch light.  

During surveys of the release sites on the French Polynesian island of Moorea, unmarked juvenile snails of Partula taeniata simulans and Partula tohiveana have both been found. This is incredible news for those species and demonstrates that the species are potentially breeding successfully in the wild.