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

An Australian team has completed what they believe is the country's first large-scale snail translocation, to bring the Campbell’s keeled glass-snail back from the brink of extinction. Photograph: Phil Fitzgerald/Lucas James/Parks Australia

On 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.