Tiny snail that spawned endangered species battle still dwindling

After clambering down a canyon wall, ducking poison ivy vines along a switchback trail and wading chest-deep across a lukewarm stream, Cary Myler squats down near a riverbank, spies some flecks that look like pepper sprinkled on a wet rock and announces, "Found some." The pinhead-sized dots are Bruneau hot springsnails. The tiny mollusks that thrive in water as warm as 100 degrees are found nowhere else in the world but here, in the bottom of this southwestern Idaho desert canyon riddled with hot springs. A decade ago, the snails were at the center of a national battle over federal laws designed to protect endangered species. Today, years after the lawsuits were decided and most of the rhetoric retired, they are closer to extinction than ever before. That's because the level of the underground geothermal aquifer that feeds the seeps and springs of hot water where the snails live keeps dropping.

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