Snail darter monitoring program in Douglas dam tailwater, 2003.
Affirming an injunction that prohibited the Tennessee Valley Authority from completing the Tellico Dam because it would eliminate the
snail darter's only known habitat, the Supreme Court resolved an intragovernmental dispute between the TVA and the Interior Department as well as the claims of the local opponents of the dam.
To round out the comedy, a few years later the
snail darter was found to flourish in several other nearby streams, so allowing Tellico did not finish it off after all.
Tellico became a national issue after biologists discovered that it would cause the extinction of the
snail darter, a tiny fish that lived in the Little Tennessee River, making the dam a test case for the Endangered Species Act.
Funds also will be gathered at the local level, as policemen will be told to write $50 "Public Churlishness" tickets and slap them on the windshields of any cars carrying a bumper sticker reading "Nuke the Whales" or "Screw the
Snail Darter." Police also will be instructed to write $35 tickets to anyone who disturbs the peace by saying things such as, "This country is starting to resemble Russia."
The $100,000,000 Tellico Dam project in Tennessee was halted indefinitely when the Supreme Court ruled that the
snail darter, a rare species of perch, was protected by the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and that construction of the dam threatened its extinction.
After the
snail darter swam onto the scene and threatened to stop a massive water project, discussions about the Endangered Species Act went from far-sighted to myopic.
In 1977 construction was delayed on Tellico Dam in Tennessee with the discovery of the
snail darter, a tiny fish that existed only in the Little Tennessee River and would vanish if the dam were completed.
Major construction projects across the country have been delayed for years because of endangered species like the Tennessee
Snail Darter and the Dusky Seaside Sparrow (which is now extinct).
And how environmentalists--at the highest level, not the college student next door who has no idea of what is being done in the name of being "green" --consider mankind to be an alien life form on the planet, while protection of the
snail darter is to be accomplished at any cost.
A little common sense in the application of some of these might help, but apparently common sense has joined the
snail darter on the Endangered List.
behalf of the little endangered
snail darter fish, Percina tanasi,