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Until we know more about the snail it is too early to say

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"Until we know more about the snail it is too early to say exactly how we will manage the population," said Mr Howe.A spokeswoman for English Nature said: "The species is a major rarity and it is on our species recovery list. Until the snail was found last month there have been no reported live specimens anywhere in the UK since 1991. As far as we know, this is the only currently known population - which is good kudos for us but bad news for the snail."He added: "It used to be fairly widespread in southern England but most of the population has disappeared because of pollution. The snail, which can grow up to 15mm, was believed to have slowly died out due to a deterioration of water quality and a lowering in the level of Wales's largest natural lake. Searches at the lake by conservationists in 1960, 1964 and 1989 failed to find any trace of the elusive snail.Mike Howe, of the Countryside Council for Wales, said: "It shows that the species is a bit more robust than we thought. The snails are the first reported in Britain since 1991 when a live specimen was found in Oxfordshire.

Large numbers of the Glutinous snail have been found in North Wales by scientists who were searching the edges of Llyn Tegid lake, at Bala, where the creatures were last recorded in 1953. It seems that the spirit of self-help that made mining communities strong in the old days is still needed today."The view round here has always been that we will survive despite what ever they do to us, or what ever help they give us," said Mr Garrity."The thing is never to let them get us down.". BRITAIN'S RAREST freshwater snail has turned up alive and well, years after it was thought to be extinct. Even so, the weekly travel bill for shopping alone is almost pounds 8.There were hopes that a local regeneration scheme might provide the village with a small shop for essentials, but the official view was that there were not enough people there to make it viable.The community is now looking into the possibility of opening a shop of its own, run by volunteers from the village. Most of them would go on visits to the doctor anyway, she said."If there was a bus service it wouldn't be so bad, but they scrapped it when the buses were privatised. I can't walk to the bus stop because of my arthritis, and then you've still got to carry the bags back," she added.Her husband, an ex-miner, makes the journey twice a week, and she clubs together with two other pensioners to take a taxi on Saturdays. Otherwise, they are faced with paying more than pounds 7 for a return taxi fare to Deal.Hettie Guthrie, 77, said the council had given her and her husband concessionary taxi tokens, but they had to pay pounds 8.50 to get those and the tokens would only cover five shopping trips a year.

Buying anything else involves a pounds 3.50 return bus fare to the nearest supermarket."We now have less choice of shopping than we have ever had," added the old man, who has lived in the village for more than 30 years but who did not wish to be named. Being quoted in a newspaper could lead to a brick through his window, he said.For the old folk of Betteshanger, site of the last pit to close in Kent, there is not even a bus service unless they fancy a half-mile walk uphill to the main road. And there was a post office and another general store over the other side of the village," he said.The post office is still there, and a small general store re-opened last year, but the only other food outlet now is a fish and chip shop. For years, it is said, the local council has been dumping "problem families" on to the isolated estate to compound the difficulties caused by the closure of the nearby Tilmanstone pit in 1990.Attempts at reopening the old Miners' Welfare centre, for instance, were wrecked when local youths repeatedly set it on fire.A 71-year-old former miner stood on the main street and lamented the decline of local facilities, pointing to the boarded-up shop frontages."One used to be a butcher, then next door there was a greengrocer, then a fish shop then a general store.

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