‘It’s an obsession’: the man on a family mission to save the glutinous snail

Ian Hughes is boosting one of Europe’s most at-risk species with science, his sons and some homemade T-shirts Ian Hughes and his son, Ben, are driving through the hills of north Wales with an array of homemade animal artefacts rattling around their car: diagrams, plaster casts, hand-printed T-shirts. They finally reach Llyn Tegid – Bala Lake in English – where, knee-deep in the water, Ian brandishes two glutinous snails. It is a mollusc the size of a fingertip. It is also one of Europe’s most...

By Isaaq Tomkins