Down in Wellington today to celebrate International Biodiversity Day we had a giant snail slither up Cuba St (without a slime trail), whilst we gathered signatures on the petition to save Mt Augustus and handed out hundreds of flyers.

We had an absolutely great response from the public and TV1 and the DominionPost both turned up. Kids loved to touched the snail and their was a suprisingly high awareness of the issue. It is refreshing to be saving the (what you may desribe as) ugly animals rather than just the pretty whale and seals.

Mt Augustus is to be mined for coal, a dirty polluting old fashioned energy source that causes climate change. It is also the home of the threatened native carnivorous snail Powelliphanta augustus, that Conservation Minister Chris Carter recently decided to move rather than saving its home. See:

www.savehappyvalley.org.nz