St. Louis is now home to a group of slimy, tropical storm evacuees that traveled here in a cooler.
Scientists rescued 34 endangered humped tree snails from Guam ahead of Super Typhoon Bavi in July, and the group has now made its way to the St. Louis Zoo.
As the typhoon was predicted to hit Guam, scientists from the University of Guam worked with the U.S. Marine Corps to gain access to a military base where one of the last known populations of the snails lives. After a long hike, the scientists began collecting the quarter-size snails in empty peanut butter jars. Then they brought them to temporary shelter in Hawaii at the Snail Extinction Prevention Program.
Finally, Zoo Invertebrate Manager Kayla Garcia traveled to Hawaii in July to pick up the Partula gibba snails.
"I had them in a little hard cooler," Garcia said. "Fish and Wildlife escorted me through the airport to make sure that there were no holdups."
Aside from one airport security agent who was worried about potential snail escape artists during an inspection, Garcia said the trip back to St. Louis was smooth.
The Partula gibba snails were once so abundant in Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands that people made jewelry out of their shells. But the population has declined dramatically in recent years, going from thousands of snails in shaded forest habitats to just dozens in a few known populations, Garcia said.
Appreciating tiny snails
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the snails because Guam is a U.S. territory, listed the species as federally endangered in 2015.
The humped tree snails are struggling to survive for multiple reasons, Garcia said. Stronger and more frequent typhoons have battered their habitat, ripping away tree canopy that typically creates the perfect climate for the snails. Introduced predators like flatworms have preyed on the snails, making it hard for their population to bounce back. And Garcia said they have experienced habitat loss.
"The population that they had been surveying on Guam for several years just continued to drop and drop and drop," Garcia said. "We were worried if we didn't move when we did, that the typhoon that was going to come in at the beginning of July would just totally wipe out the population."
The St. Louis Zoo is now the only zoo in the world to house the Partula gibba snail. It was a natural fit in part because the zoo has worked with other species of Partula snails for decades.
"We were planning on getting the snails here at some point," Garcia said. "We just didn't anticipate us having to need to act so quickly because of that emergent threat from Typhoon Bavi."
While the snails are humble in appearance, Garcia said they deserve more respect, especially for their important role in their ecosystems.
"I've always been drawn towards the animals that needed a little more love, a little attention, some advocacy, because obviously it's easy for people to fall in love with tigers and elephants, and they are amazing animals in and of themselves, but it takes people a little bit more convincing to appreciate a snail," Garcia said.
Scientists believe tree snails help keep forests healthy by essentially cleaning plants — they eat a leaf film that can contain fungus and other bacteria. Garcia wonders how the forests will stay healthy without big enough populations of the snails.
The new St. Louis residents seem to be settling in well and have already started to have baby snails.
"We would like to get these guys back to Guam," Garcia said. "We started with 34 snails back in mid-July, and we are already over 50 with the number of babies that we've had born."
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