The Pacific Sideband Snail has a shell diameter of up to 3.5 cm and is a medium-sized land snail. Its shell has 5 to 6 spirals, with lighter coloured thin bands that cross each one. The uppermost swirls are often pale from wear. Shell colour ranges from gold to dark brown, and lightning to amber around the shell opening.
This snail lives in a habitat of moist ground covered with leaves, moss, needles, and other debris in our forests. They have a 6 to 7-year lifespan.
The snail eats fungi and other vegetation. It eats using its radula. A combination of tongue and teeth is an inaccurate but useful way of describing it. They use it to scrape and shred food, so it can be ingested.
Snails are hermaphrodites. They have both male and female sex organs at the same time. Most snails, including the Pacific Sideband, have two pairs of tentacles. The uppermost pair carries eyes. The lower pair is the snail’s nostrils.
I found one of these several years ago in my Nanoose Bay garden – quite a distance from Duncan.
The original post had this as an Oregon Forest Snail, this was wrong and it now has been labeled correctly as the Pacific Sideband Snail. The Oregon forest snail only has a population in the Duncan area, while the pacific sideband snail is common on the whole Island
Not sure if anyone has ever corrected this page, but this is a Pacific Sideband Snail, not an Endangered Oregon Forestsnail. There is only one known population of OFS on Vancouver Island, near Duncan I believe. Pacific Sideband snails (like the one pictured above) are more common and are our largest land snail in BC. See this handy guide from the South Coast Conservation Program:
http://www.sccp.ca/species-and-habitat scroll down to ID Tips Factsheets
Thank You Pamela, page has been corrected.