Snails on a plane: Australia flies rescue mission to Norfolk Island for a tiny, critically endangered species

The Campbell's keeled glass-snail is officially extinct, but researchers have 'high hopes' that translocation will allow the population to thrive Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton's free Clear Air newsletter hereOn a grey day in early June, a commercial plane landed at Norfolk Island Airport in the South Pacific. Onboard was precious cargo ferried some 1,700km from Sydney: four blue plastic crates with "LIVE ANIMALS" signs affixed to the outside.Inside were thumbnail-sized snails, hundreds of them, with delicate, keeled shells. The molluscs' arrival was the culmination of an ambitious plan five years in the making: to bring a critically endangered species back from the brink. Continue reading...