Distribution
Patera clarki nantahala is an endemic subspecies, part of the wildlife of North Carolina.
Its distribution is restricted to part of the Nantahala Gorge, in the Appalachian Mountains, in Swain County, North Carolina.
The noonday globe snail is known from a small area: approximately 2 miles of high cliffs within the Nantahala Gorge, on the east side of the gorge.
The noonday globe snail was probably never widely distributed. Its preferred habitat of steep wet slopes with calcareous rocks is rare in western North Carolina. However, the subspecies was probably more widely distributed within the gorge before the gorge itself was altered for a railroad and a highway U.S. Route 19. Both of these projects altered the forest community along the river. The associated loss of the forest canopy allowed more sunlight to penetrate the gorge, and dried out the lower slope. This habitat alteration allowed such non-native plants as Kudzu and Japanese honeysuckle to invade some roadside areas, and changed the area's natural plant and animal community.
In an attempt to secure the snail's continued existence, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service added it as a threatened subspecies, to the Federal Endangered and Threatened Species List on July 3, 1978. It is a Federal offense punishable by as much as a $50,000 fine and one year in jail for taking a noonday snail.
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