KEY POINTS:
It's a slow, moving story with a strong, silent hero. Snail - The Movie had its premiere in Wellington yesterday.
It's not quite an epic Cecil B. deMille tale of Moses leading his people through the desert to the promised land.
Rather, Snail is the story of coal
company Solid Energy, the Department of Conservation and some enthusiastic volunteers moving several thousand snails a few hundred metres along a windswept West Coast bluff to a similarly undesirable locale.
Undesirable that is, unless you are a powelliphanta augustus - a giant carnivorous snail native to the Coast.
Or if you are a coal company desperate to extend the Stockton opencast mine into the snail's backyard to get at the premium-quality coal beneath.
Snail is a 20-minute DVD documenting the first two years of what will ultimately be a decade-long project to relocate and maintain the population of Mt Augustus snails, which Solid Energy was ordered to preserve and protect.
Like many good stories it grew in the telling. A population originally thought to be down to a critically endangered 250 to 500 snails was eventually found to be more than 6000, meaning the few upright refrigerators originally bought to store the snails in before their migration had to be upgraded to five cool stores.
Two-thirds of the snails have now been released back into the wild, and the rest are living in climate-controlled comfort at DoC's Hokitika office.
Scientists remain divided over whether the snails are a unique species - as originally thought - or are rather a sub-species or another form of an already-known snail.
Like many a cinematic retelling of a true story, Snail is likely to find its critics.
Certain episodes in the story of powelliphanta augustus, such as the Royal Forest and Bird Society's High Court battle to obtain ministerial protection for the snail, do not feature in the film.
Neither does the vociferous protest group Save Happy Valley Coalition, which vigorously opposed the shifting of the snails and has fought several court battles against Stockton Mine.
"We never intended this to be a propaganda movie, although I'm sure some will see it that way," Solid Energy chief executive Don Elder said of the $50,000 project.
The company regarded its efforts as a success story, although it conceded it was still too early to draw any long-term conclusions about its eventual outcome.
The snails still in DoC care have had a 97 per cent survival rate and have been laying eggs, and survival rates in the three places the animals have been released in the wild vary between 75 and 90 per cent.
Solid Energy spends about $20 million a year on mitigating the environmental impact of its mines.
