{"id":715364,"date":"2026-07-28T12:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T12:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/715364\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T12:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T12:44:10","slug":"chester-zoo-staff-rescue-near-extinct-snails-from-remote-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/715364\/","title":{"rendered":"Chester Zoo staff rescue near-extinct snails from remote rock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Zoo conservationists have bred 300 near-extinct tiny snails and introduced them back into the wild.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Just 21 Madeiran lands snails were found clinging to a rock on Portugal&#8217;s Bugio Island. They were believed to be the last of their kind.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Experts at Chester Zoo said they had to brave treacherous conditions and climb cliffs to return them to their natural home, which is part of the Madeira archipelago in the Atlantic ocean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Madeira government had asked the Chester Zoo experts to help with the snail conservation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The conservationists had scramble from the water up a cliff face in the dark to find cracks in the rocks where the snails could be safely left.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tamas Papp, assistant team manager for invertebrates at Chester Zoo, said: &#8220;We knew we had one shot to save them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If we missed this chance, that was it: they were gone.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zoo conservationists have bred 300 near-extinct tiny snails and introduced them back into the wild. Just 21 Madeiran&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-715364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}