The Desertas Island land snails have been set free to roam on the uninhabited island of Bugio, near Madeira

More than 1,300 tiny, critically endangered snails have been set free to roam on an island off the coast of Morocco after a breeding programme rescued two obscure species from the brink of extinction.

The Desertas Island land snails had not been recorded for more than 100 years and were believed to have disappeared from their natural habitat on the windswept, mountainous island of Deserta Grande, close to Portugal-owned Madeira.

Experts at the Instituto das Florestas e Conservação da Natureza (IFCN) rediscovered minute populations of two species of the snail, each consisting of fewer than 200 survivors, in conservation expeditions between 2012 and 2017 amid fears that invasive predators might have eaten the pea-sized molluscs into oblivion.