Land snails of Norfolk Island

Lying between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia, Norfolk Island is a remote volcanic island of around 35 km². As well as great natural beauty and high numbers of endemic species, including around 60 endemic land snails, part of the island is also listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site based on its well-preserved convict-era buildings. Norfolk Island has a long history of human habitation, including an early Polynesian settlement, two periods of convict settlement, and then the entrusting of the island to descendants of the Pitcairn Islanders in 1856.

The COILS team were initially drawn to the idea of studying the land snails of Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island in tandem, given the biogeographic links between the two islands. However, a month before Isabel, Frank and Adnan Moussalli (Museums Victoria) travelled to Norfolk Island for their first survey in 2020, they were sent a photograph taken by Norfolk Island resident Mark Scott of a land snail thought to be extinct. Mark took them to the site and the team confirmed that Advena campbellii, listed on the IUCN Red List as extinct in 1996, was alive and well.

But how long would it remain that way? Surveys showed that two of the five threatened snails on Norfolk Island were limited to tiny populations, each in a single site, very susceptible to any threats that might arise. (The other three species, last recorded from nearby Phillip Island, were not found at all.) So the team reached out to the Norfolk Island National Park (Parks Australia), the Norfolk Island Regional Council and Taronga Conservation Society Australia, and a conservation collaboration to protect the threatened snails was born.

Since then, new collaborators from Western Sydney University, the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communication, Sport and the Arts, and Senversa have joined the team. Between 2020 and 2025 there have been around 15 snail surveys on Norfolk Island, with many Team Snail helpers from across all project partners. This culminated in a six-month stay on the island by Western Sydney University PhD student Junn Kitt Foon in July to December 2025, to support the reintroduction of captive-bred snails onto the island.

Scientific outcomes so far include a taxonomic revision of the Microcystidae, an online husbandry manual, and a paper outlining our conservation work to date. We have also established a successful husbandry program for one species at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, and have successfully transported captive-reared snails and released them at a new site on Norfolk Island.

You can read more about our expeditions to Norfolk Island in the blogs and videos below, including some additional species feared extinct that we discovered along the way, and the story of the breeding and release of Advena campbellii.

Follow the Australian Museum's 'Team Snail' as they search for three critically endangered snail species in Norfolk Island during their 2022 expedition.

Learn how the once thought-to-be-extinct Advena campbellii is making a historic return to Norfolk Island through a transformational breeding program and Australia’s first large-scale snail reintroduction.