The Chittenango Creek, which runs north for about 30 twisting miles in central New York, has few distinguishing markers, and the towns it passes through are small and overlooked.
Near the source of the creek, the riverbed flattens out and drops 167 feet over a series of limestone cliffs that are categorized into ledges and still smaller rock shelves. The water that falls down the cliffs magnified the qualities of the fractals. The mist is illuminated by sunlight from the southeast on some mornings.
On a recent Thursday, a dozen people clustered on one side of the falls, along two ledges that were covered in a variety of plants. The Chittenango ovate amber snail is only found in an area about the size of a living room.
There are a thousand land snails that are at risk of extinction. Scientists have been studying their populations to understand how changes in the environment could affect them more broadly. The real canaries in the coal mine are land snails.
Dr. Rundell is conducting research on land snails in the Republic of Palau, and similar projects are being done in other places as well. The issues are the same in her backyard as they are in her house. She said that the status of the local snail is indicative of what is happening to land around the world.
The team gathered on the side of the waterfall, their feet and knees planted cautiously but firmly on rocks, to sift through the dirt and roots. They want to figure out how many of these snails remain in the wild.
A Biologist who has helped lead research on Chits for the past decade was up near the top of the falls watching over five mature snails that she had raised in captivity and was about to release. She referred to it as nail sitting.
The spray zone of the waterfall had wild Chits all over it. The numbers went down over time. A large chunk of the population was lost in a rock slide in 2009. In 2010, the number of wild Chits was around 1,000; in 2015, it was around 400; and this year, it's in the double digits.
On the day before the survey, Ms. Gilbertson was in a lab in Syracuse counting out baby Chits, each smaller than a sesame seed, that speckled the inside of plastic deli containers. There were 150 mature snails and 200 juvenile snails that had been raised in the lab.
Ms. Gilbertson handed the container to a researcher who has been studying Chits for the past year. Ms.Whitbread used a flat-tipped paintbrush to comb through the leaves. She said that sometimes they like to hide in cracks.
Chits are born with their shells which are white in color. It's hard to see when they're alive. It can take hours to count the animals in the captivity. The snail population in this lab is the only one in the world. You have lost track of one of the Chits if you lose track of one snail.
Reflecting on the past can go on for a while. Ms. Gilbertson said that they just have to move on.
Ms. Gilbertson has spent most of her career trying to figure out how to keep the Chit population alive in captivity. A decade after the late 1990s failed, Ms. Gilbertson brought a group of adults into the lab and refused to eat. The animals began to die as Ms. Gilbertson tried to feed them.
One day, a cherry leaf was able to work.
The lab is a shrine to the survival of the snails. The sides of the room are lined with buckets of leaves that are being collected and sorted. The walls of the cemetery are marked with red dots that indicate good salad spots. Sugar maple is one of the snails favorite leaves. The leaves are sprayed with water from Chittenango Falls and put into a leaf lasagna. The wild habitat has calcium-rich soil.
A captive population of Chits can theoretically bolster the existing population of wild snails, serve as a last-ditch defense against their extinction, and possibly be the source for a new wild population in a different waterfall spray zone. Efforts to reestablish snails to Chittenango Falls have not offset the decline of the wild population. Captive breeding is not likely to save the snails.
The surveyors tried to find as many wild snails as possible in 15 minutes by putting them in Tupperware containers and then under a park pavilion to inspect them closely. The snails would be superglued to their shells to release them back into the environment.
A dark spot on the foot of a Chit distinguishes it from Succinea putris, an Invasive Land snail that is native to Appalachia and now also lives in the Chits. The interactions between Species B and others are unknown.
Ms Gilbertson said she gets emails from people saying they found a Chit in her backyard. I looked and it was species B.
The team was able to collect five Chits after an hour of sorting. Two had been caught earlier in the summer, one had been released from the captive population and the other had a white tag on it. Ms. Gilbertson was happy to see some fresh snails. I think it gives me hope.
She said that by entering this tiny world, we are able to see something that we don't normally see. The little guys are just as important to conserve as the big guys.
A few of the researchers walked back down to the falls to release the snails that had been collected as well as the five that Ms. Gilbertson had picked out. Water poured down the falls as the sun shone overhead. The living room was the only place where the only wild population of Chittenango ovate amber snails could be found. The corner of the Earth was nice and shady.
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