Today’s Endangered All-Star: The Banff Springs Snail, a survivor if ever there was one. This air-breathing, freshwater mollusc, identified in 1926 and described as “no larger than a toddler’s thumbnail,” lived in nine sulphurous thermal hot pools in Banff, adapted to a low-oxygen, high hydrogen sulfide environment. Now, the species occupies only five of those pools, and an entertaining Edmonton Journal article from 1999 explains why: People insist on trailing their hands through the hot pools, depositing noxious substances in this highly-endangered species’ only environment. When ten youngsters took an illegal skinny dip in the pools that year, a Canadian judge levied fines ranging from $100 to $1000, in order to discourage copycats from fouling the watery realm of the first mollusc on Canada’s endangered species list. Dwayne Lepitzki, a snail expert, was brought in to calculate the damage: Ten days prior to the naked intrusion, he had counted 6,580 snails; after, only 5,984. “I think the judge did the right thing in sending such a strong message,” Lepitzki told the newspaper. “Jumping in and out of the water causes severe havoc to the snail’s habitat. With the fluctuating water levels, some of the snails got stranded on the walls of the pool. Others may have been victims of the changing chemistry that the people introduced to the water.” He added, with some disgust, “think of the bug dope that most visitors put on themselves.” Happily, however, Lipitzki was not deterred in his life’s work by the incident, telling the Journal that he had no doubt that, in their unique environment, the tiny snails are “as important as the grizzly.”
Loading…}