{"id":360881,"date":"2025-01-07T16:12:47","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T15:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=360881"},"modified":"2025-01-07T16:12:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T15:12:49","slug":"the-little-fish-that-could","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=360881","title":{"rendered":"The Little Fish That Could"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opinion by Kip Hansen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSwim Swim Swim.  Blub Blub Blub<\/em>. The little fish swam along the river.  He was a happy little fish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this little fish was very proud.  All by itself, just by swimming along in the Little Tennessee River<\/a>, the happy little fish stopped the creation of the Tellico Reservoir<\/a> \u2013 for six long years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is one of the seminal stories of the great Environmental Movement of the 1970s<\/a> .    And one of the many stories of the destructive overreach of the United States\u2019 Environmental Protection Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Snail Darter, then\u00a0Percina tanasi<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0was claimed by the EPA to be an\u00a0Endangered Species<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 It was listed on October 9, 1975, for the specific purpose of preventing the completion of the Tellico Dam which was claimed to present a threat to the continued existence of the Snail Darter \u2014 if the dam was built the Snail Darter would go extinct.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years of legal challenges, all the way to the Supreme Court, delayed the completion of the dam.\u00a0 Finally, legislative efforts resulted in President\u00a0Jimmy Carter<\/a>\u00a0signing a bill that exempted the Tellico Dam from the Endangered Species Act on September 25, 1979.\u00a0 \u00a0The bill, proposed by Senator\u00a0Howard Baker<\/a>, exempted the Snail Darter from the provisions of the\u00a0Endangered Species Act (ESA).\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The episode is discussed in a Wiki article Snail darter controversy<\/a> \u2013 I have no idea how accurate the article is or if it is biased in any particular direction.   Only now, fifty years later, do the real facts become known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was suspected at the time that the listing of the snail darter under the ESA was a political move to placate the growing Environmental Movement in the United States.  Many activists left without a cause with the ending of the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam<\/a> had quickly realigned themselves with environmentalism, within a few years following Earth Day in 1970<\/a>.  Challenging the building of a major new dam in Tennessee gave them something to fight against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to earlier this week, to January 03, 2025,  and the publication of Comparative species delimitation of a biological conservation icon<\/a>; <\/em><\/strong> Otto et al. 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As explained in the New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn Friday, a team of researchers argued that the fish was a phantom all along.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is, technically, no snail darter,\u201d said Thomas Near, curator of ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDr. Near, also a professor who leads a fish biology lab at Yale, and his colleagues report in the journal Current Biology<\/a> that the snail darter, <\/em>Percina tanasi, is neither a distinct species nor a subspecies. Rather, it is an eastern population of <\/em>Percina uranidea, known also as the stargazing darter, which is not considered endangered.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Near, bless his heart, gets a little more honest when he says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDr. Near contends that early researchers \u201csquinted their eyes a bit\u201d when describing the fish, because it represented a way to fight the Tennessee Valley Authority\u2019s plan to build the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River, about 20 miles southwest of Knoxville.\u201d<\/em>\u201cI feel it was the first and probably the most famous example of what I would call the \u2018conservation species concept,\u2019 where people are going to decide a species should be distinct because it will have a downstream conservation implication,\u201d Dr. Near said.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The environmental movement points to a book \u201cThe Snail Darter and the Dam<\/a>\u201d by Zygmunt J. B. Plater:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c<\/em><\/strong>The untold story of a notorious environmental case and the citizen crusade that carried a little fish through Washington politics and the Supreme Court<\/em><\/strong>

Even today, thirty years after the legal battles to save the endangered snail darter, the little fish that blocked completion of a TVA dam is still invoked as an icon of leftist extremism and governmental foolishness. In this eye-opening book, the lawyer who with his students fought and won the Supreme Court case\u2014known officially as <\/em>Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill<\/em>\u2014tells the hidden story behind one of the nation\u2019s most significant environmental law battles.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It tells the story of brave \u201cthe little fish that could\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you see, just like The Little Train That Could<\/a><\/em>, the Little Fish was, all along,  a fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

# # # # #<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author\u2019s Comment:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A cautionary tale \u2013 perk your ears up, turn your Critical Thinking knob up to full, whenever you hear of some species or other being declared a new species or a new subspecies \u2013 such as is being done with the giraffes<\/a>.  Some of these decisions may be being made to bolster conservation claims leading to declarations of Endangered Species status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The are far more species that are unknown to mankind than have been \u2018discovered\u2019 , described and assigned names. How many may be disappearing every year and how many are coming into existence as new species is unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have my doubts about the whole species thing<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

# # # # #<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSwim Swim Swim.\u00a0 Blub Blub Blub. The little fish swam along the river.\u00a0 He was a happy little fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this little fish was very proud.\u00a0 All by itself, just by swimming along in the\u00a0Little Tennessee River, the happy little fish stopped the creation of the\u00a0Tellico Reservoir\u00a0\u2013 for six long years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":360885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691822681,691832485,691832484,691832486],"class_list":{"0":"post-360881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-endangered-species-act-esa","9":"tag-snail-darter","10":"tag-united-states-environmental-protection-agency","11":"tag-washington-politics-and-the-supreme-court","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/046e54f8e-61ae-402e-a678-3f1a492891d5-snail-darter-in-hand_0.webp?fit=3200%2C1801&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1vSF","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":251248,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=251248","url_meta":{"origin":360881,"position":0},"title":"Bellies 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