Extinction

The Government have required that Solid Energy transfer up to 250 Augustus snails away from their habitat by hand – some into captivity, some to a tiny sliver of habitat left on adjoining conservation land, and some to another location nearby. A secondary ‘conservation’ measure is the direct transfer of snail habitat with heavy machinery

But there are good scientific reasons why none of this will save the snails.

Captivity: A second generation of Powelliphanta snails have never been reared successfully in captivity – they always die of diseases after a few weeks. It’s likely that the alpine Augustus snails will be even more difficult to raise successfully in artificial environments.

Transfer: New Zealand has pioneered many captive-rearing and species transfer techniques. But these snails aren’t like our bird species, which used to be widespread. The Augustus snails have spent a long time evolving to occupy a tiny area of specialised habitat, and it’s likely that the different vegetation, aspect, elevation, rainfall and humidity of proposed transfer sites will make it impossible for the snails to survive in the long term. If they could survive at the proposed site, it’s highly likely they would have already got there by themselves. What’s more, the site only has enough space for 80 snails – not a sustainable population.

Other habitat: The six percent of habitat that will remain unmined already holds the handful of snails it can support – putting more snails there will simply cause competition for resources. What’s more, DOC has granted Solid Energy a concession to drop up to a couple of hundred tonnes at a time of blasting debris on this area – that’s several truckloads of rocks!

Direct transfer: Moving vegetation and dirt by bulldozer is an unlikely method for saving species, to say the least. It is likely that this will kill a great number of snails.

By the time we know for sure that these techniques have failed, it will be too late. Because the Government has not required Solid Energy to delay mining at all, the source population and habitat will have been destroyed.

The Biodiversity Committee of the Royal Society, New Zealand’s premier independent scientific academy, urged the Minister of Conservation to make the courageous and responsible decision to protect this unique species. Instead he chose to pander to an out-of-control state-owned enterprise and send New Zealand’s most recently discovered species to extinction.