The reintroduction of 1,329 land snails on Bugio Island, carried out as part of the Help Desertas Snails conservation program, and first reported by DIÁRIO, gained prominence in various media outlets in the United Kingdom, France and Portugal.
This project, coordinated by Dinarte Teixeira, a biologist at IFCN, has a broad international partnership. The zoos of Chester and Bristol (United Kingdom) and Beauval (France) are participating, as well as Mossy Earth (United Kingdom) and the Atlantic Islands Invertebrate Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The initiative was widely publicised, with dedicated reports on Sky News and BBC News, which included live interviews with partners Gerardo Garcia (Chester Zoo) and Tiago de Zoeten (Mossy Earth). There was also extensive coverage in the written press in all three countries.
Additionally, exclusive pieces were shown on BBC Radio, TSF and Antena 1, with the participation of Gerardo Garcia and Dinarte Teixeira, highlighting the joint efforts of the project.
Four more preliminary reintroduction campaigns are planned to be carried out between 2025 and 2026. The ongoing monitoring programme will assess the success of the reintroduction by analysing the survival rate of the reintroduced snails and the potential impact on the malacological communities of Bugio Island. The data collected will be essential to measure the success of the ongoing conservation programme.