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A man is facing up to $75,000 in fines and a year in jail after he was caught in the thermal pool at the Cave and Basin National Historic Site — home to the endangered Banff Springs Snail.

Around 2 p.m. on Nov. 26, Parks Canada staff reported that a man was bathing in the cave’s pool in Banff National Park.

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“Park wardens responded and arrested the suspect, who was subsequently charged with entering a closed area under the national parks general regulations and Species At Risk Act,” Mark Merchant, spokesman for Banff National Park, said Wednesday in an emailed statement. “Bathing in the thermal pools damages the snails’ ecosystem.”

The Banff Springs Snail was first discovered in 1926, but it wasn’t studied until 70 years later, in 1996. A year later, it made history as the first mollusk to be designated as threatened.

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The world’s entire population of the snails is confined to tiny patches of rare and fragile habitat — the thermal springs. It could easily become extinct unless its habitat is protected, and it has already disappeared from some of its historic range.