Snail darter

The snail darter is a small (minnow-sized) fish native to waters of East Tennessee. It was the focus of an environmental lawsuit in the 1970s in an attempt to prevent the completion of Tellico Dam, a proposed impoundment of the Little Tennessee River by the Tennessee Valley Auithority. The dam eventually resulted in the flooding of the site of the traditional capital of the Cherokee nation, Echota, which many cited as the true, or at least major, reason behind the suit. The dam project was eventually exempted from the Endangered Species Act by a special act of Congress and allowed to be completed; however the suit was one of several showing the potential efficacy of this approach to evnrionmental actvism; a slightly later dam project of the TVA was halted by this approach using a different endanged species and eventually dismantled.

The snail darter itself is a variety of darter which feeds primarily on aquatic snails, which is the origin of its name. Before the closure of the gates of Tellico Dam, numerous snail darters were transplanted into the Hiwasee River. These may have survived; in any event, some biologists claim to have found the same species in other, undisturbed streams of the area, and there is some consensus that the Little Tennessee River was never the sole environment in which these fish lived as had been alleged in the suit.

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