- [Narrator] This pond might not look like much, but it's the site of the first step in restoring a magnificent species to the wild.

Meet the magnificent ramshorn snail.

- Okay, bye guy.

Good luck.

[speaking foreign language] In case you don't speak English.

- [Narrator] But to understand why this is such an exciting moment, we need to travel back to where these snails came from because they've been on quite a journey.

Here at the hatchery in Marion, North Carolina, there's a team of biologists raising these little snails with a big name.

- You know, I don't know exactly why they chose magnificent ramshorn.

It's quite large compared to other snails, and it's really beautiful.

It's got this kind of tan shell with leopard spots almost, and the body is this deep maroon color.

So I just sort of like to think it's magnificent.

When they saw it, they couldn't help but name it anything else.

- [Narrator] Also, they can crawl upside down on the surface of water.

And look at those cute little I stocks.

- They're so cute.

- [Narrator] The magnificent ramshorn is endemic to North Carolina, meaning it's only known to live in one very specific area along the coast.

But the thing is, it hasn't been seen in the wild in almost 20 years.

- These snails actually don't live in the wild anymore.

They're what we call extirpated.

They're not extinct because we keep them in captivity.

We have three captive populations in the state of North Carolina in three separate areas to sort of safe keep from anything happening in wiping them all out - [Narrator] And keeping them alive in aquariums is no easy task.

In 1992, biologists Andy Wood rescued some of the last of these snails found in the wild right before Hurricane Fran, and quickly discovered how sensitive they are to water quality.

- I knew, all right, this is the last place that it might exist.

Let's bring it into captivity.

So I brought it into the aquarium where I worked at the time and had it set up in aquaculture tanks in the building.

But the salt atmosphere of the building contaminated the water.

The snails withdrew into their shells, I knew something was wrong.

So I immediately pulled them out, took them home, usurped our young son's little waiting pool, and that began the Magnificent Ramshorn Recovery Project.

- It's a very unique niche species.

They have a very specific habitat requirement.

To reproduce successfully, they really need a pH between about six and eight.

They can go a little bit higher than that, and the adults can tolerate lower than that, but the juveniles cannot.

- It has no salinity tolerance, so it can't handle any salt water at all.

- [Narrator] Which means sea level rise has an impact on where the snail can live.

- They're endemic to the lower Cape Fear River Basin.

- They've only been found in four mill ponds that we know of.

A couple centuries ago, people were heavily, heavily interested in collecting shells of snails and mussels in the 18th, 19th century.

It was a really popular hobby.

And a lot of our museum collections come from that time period.

Because there's not a record of these animals in any other places in all of those collections, we're fairly confident that they weren't in other places because they're so large and distinctive that they would've been picked up by those people for sure.

And so that makes 'em a really unique little Carolina treasure, so to speak.

- [Narrator] Poor water quality caused by nearby development, pollution and encroaching sea level rise has made some of the places they used to call home uninhabitable.

But alongside Andy's efforts, state and federal biologists have stewarded captive populations of the magnificent ramshorn waiting for the day when they'll be able to return to the wild, and that day is finally here.

But first, all of the snails being added to the pond are getting little numbered tags.

- We have these really tiny tags.

They are actually honeybee tags that people use to tag their queen bees, and the goal is to just know which snails are our contribution to the wild and which are natural reproduction.

They are super kind of gooey.

They create like a lot of slime.

- [Narrator] Amelia and the team are prepping 800 snails to introduce to the wild.

And speaking of the wild, an important part of this process was finding the perfect place to release them, because what they need to succeed is not easy to find in their historic range.

- We were really excited when we found this pond.

Since it just gets runoff, it stays pretty neutral for the most part, and hopefully we'll provide a good habitat for them that's more stable over time.

- [Narrator] For years, the team has been monitoring water quality, adding plants, and adjusting the pH of this pond to make it an ideal magnificent ramshorn habitat.

They've even added fenced areas to help the plants thrive and give the snails a headstart before predators can get to them.

And there's a big reason that releasing the snails in this pond is a possibility.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service and North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission are coming together under a safe harbor agreement to potentially return 21 endangered or potentially endangered aquatic species to the wild, including the magnificent ramshorn snail.

- This is a really new approach to conservation.

The really neat thing about the agreement is that we can work with private and non-federal landowners.

They can enroll with us, and then if they have habitat that is suitable for the species, they can become part of this conservation story with us.

It's the piece that we've been missing, the piece that we can work with the private citizens of North Carolina to help us to recover species when they're already doing really good work.

- [Narrator] And since the magnificent ramshorn snail requires a very specific habitat, being able to work with landowners that have that habitat on their property is a big win for this species.

After being chauffeured across the state in specially designated coolers, the snails are eased into their new home.

- We're gonna take the coolers down to the edge of the pond, and we're going to start slowly adding a little bit of pond water into the coolers at a time to introduce the snails to the new water.

If we just threw the snails in there, it might shock them so much that it would kill them.

So we just give them a little bit of time to adjust and get used to a new quality of the world around them.

- This is wickedly exciting.

- I've only been here for six months, but you know, I've been at this pond every once a week for the last six months, sometimes more than once a week, so it feels good to finally have snails in the snail pond.

I get emotional thinking about it a little bit.

It's just really exciting.

They've been in captivity for so long, and for them to finally be free, albeit in a pond, but for them to have more space and more nutrients, fresh air, fresh water, it feels like where they're supposed to be.

And so it feels really good to be a part of getting the back where they're supposed to be.

- This is the first reintroduction effort that we've done for this species.

So we don't know for certain how they will do.

I think they just need a chance.

They need a window, and they haven't really had the opportunity.

And so I think we gave them an open window.

I think they'll take full advantage of it.

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