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How do you save a critically endangered species of gorilla? What if someone told you: with a snail? It may sound like a joke, but that’s exactly what’s happening in Nigeria, where poaching has reduced the population of the Cross River Gorilla to 300 lonely animals. Because of illegal logging, mining, and the bushmeat trade, this species could be extinct in 15 years, if not shorter of time. Yet, because of new innovative thinking on behalf of conservationists, these apes have been given a new lease on life.

In the new conservation equation, environmental crusaders have given up the largely “keep people out” attitude and adjusted it to “keep everything in balance,” meaning working people into the solution. In this particular case, the Wildlife Conservation Society is working to deter the hungry and poverty stricken locale from poaching gorillas by guiding them towards another income and food stream. “People living near Cross River gorillas have trouble finding alternative sources of income and food and that’s why they poach,” said James Deutsch, WCS’s Africa program director. “We are working with them to test many livelihood alternatives, but perhaps the most promising, not to mention novel, is snail farming.”

To put this theory into action, the WCS has chosen 8 former poachers and helped them create pens for giant African snails, a local delicacy. Their hope is that this will be a semi-profitable enterprise, generating $413 in profit per year instead of the $70 retrieved from the meat of one gorilla. Thus, snail farming could provide both a source of revenue and protein for Nigerians, making it more worthwhile to raise snails than to hunt endangered apes, and act as a model of sustainability for conservation crusaders worldwide.

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