On a drizzly November evening, ecologists in Brest, Brittany, are rooting through the damp undergrowth flanking an unmarked and unlit track going nowhere. They are searching for Quimper snails. It’s a slow and meticulous job: the snails are small, come out only at night and prefer the dank, dark cover of soggy leaves and twigs.
Soon, their natural habitat here will be destroyed by a €200m (£170m) public transport project, which includes a new tramway.
As environmental damage cannot be avoided, it has to be reduced and compensated for. So the Quimper snails, only known to exist in northern Brittany and the Basque Country, are being saved, one gastropod at a time, and compensated with a new home.
“Here’s one,” says Timothée Scherer, a conservationist at Biotope, an ecological consultancy. He holds in his palm a copper-coloured translucent shell no bigger than a pinkie fingernail, whose occupant has retracted its horns and is shunning the unexpected limelight.
It is a race against time to find as many of the snails as possible before the temperature drops and they hibernate. Scherer admits there appears to be an abundance of the snails in the undergrowth, but as a protected species they have to be found and saved.
“Because they only exist in two places in the world there is obviously a risk of extinction,” he says. “Elsewhere there are very few.”
That Brest’s multimillion-euro public transport scheme should be forced to consider the fate of flora and fauna is a welcome surprise. But it is not the first time the Quimper snails have fought the odds and won, much to the chagrin of local developers.
In 2012, the city’s football club, Stade Brestois, was forced to halt its plans for a new training centre after it was discovered that the proposed site was home to the snails. The centre was eventually built on a snail-free site.
Mindful that it could face similar objections, Brest Métropole authority commissioned an environmental impact study into the proposed transport plan that includes a second tram line, new bus route, 7 miles (12km) of new cycle lanes and nine hubs where the various forms of transport converge, as well as an inventory of the vegetation and animals that would be affected.
The study found 200 species in the construction area, 75 of which are officially protected. Among them were birds, bats and reptiles, most of which were deemed able to relocate. The slow-moving snails, however, presented a problem.
The Quimper snail, or Elona quimperiana, is an air-breathing gastropod protected at French and EU level. Unlike most common snails, its brown, transparent shell lies flat. Its predators include hedgehogs, birds, toads, salamanders, beetles and some worms, though the greatest threat is the deforestation of its natural habitat and the prevalence of non-native trees.
Although the species is not considered directly endangered in France or Spain, Quimper snail populations are said to be “fragile” and their limited geographic situation makes them vulnerable.
“Our aim is to clear the area of individuals before the work starts,” Scherer says, placing another Quimper snail in a plastic bucket lined with fresh mulch. “We will also scrape off the topsoil so we are moving the snails’ environment with them.”
Netting barriers have been put around the cleared areas to stop the snails returning.
Work to lay tramlines has already begun, and the new transport network is expected to open in 2026. Officials suggest heeding environmental concerns has added an extra year to the project that began in 2019.
“Environmental challenges can be seen as a constraint to projects but we view it as an important issue. It doesn’t have to be a competition,” says engineer Victor Antonio, director of mobilities for Brest Métropole local authority. Preservation is now built into all the city’s development projects, he says.
Five hundred trees will also have to be cut down, but 1,500 new trees will be planted. When the work has finished, conservationists hope those creatures that have taken flight or scuttled away will return.
Placing the snails in their new habitat, about 200 metres from their old home, Scherer says conservationists will be keeping an eye on them: “This operation takes time but we don’t know how important these individual snails will be for the species as a whole. Each individual snail we find here may be important in allowing the species to remain here.
“And by protecting the snails, we’re also protecting its habitat and a whole range of species that live there,” he says.
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features
