Its population has since been expanded to Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. These steps helped boost the fish’s recovery, allowing the snail darter to recolonize in Tennessee waterways. However, the TVA worked to transplant the snail darter to other rivers and streams.įederal officials say the TVA also worked to improve water flows and increase oxygen in more than 300 miles of river downstream from their dams. In 1978, the court ruled in favor of protections for the fish and halted work on the nearly completed dam.Ĭongress later exempted the dam from the law to allow the project to be completed. Supreme Court, marking the first time the nation’s highest court took up an ESA case. The case eventually made its way to the U.S. “It is very fitting that this fish, which was once a source of controversy, became the subject of cooperation and partnerships to save it.”Ĭonstruction of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Tellico Dam in eastern Tennessee threatened the habitat of the newly discovered fish, located just above the site of the project. “The Endangered Species Act was passed to ensure all wildlife, even species that some might view as insignificant, deserve to be preserved for future generations,” said Martha Williams, the federal agency’s service principle deputy director. It led to many legal battles, but the struggle over the lowly darter became one of the most notable. The law made it illegal to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or collect” endangered animals, and forbid the elimination of their habitats. The fish garnered national attention shortly after the passage of the landmark 1973 Endangered Species Act. The darter was first listed as a federally endangered species in 1975, but later moved to “threatened” in 1984, meaning the species still faced a danger of extinction in the foreseeable future. Snail darters, a member of the perch family, grow up to 3.5 inches (9 centimeters) long and mostly eat fresh-water snails. “Thanks to the persistence of many people, the extinction of the snail darter was ultimately avoided, and today we can celebrate its recovery,” said Zygmunt Plater, the attorney who wrote the citizens’ petition to save the snail darter in 1975. Fish and Wildlife Service has begun the process to delist the species, a move backed by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has favored lifting protections for the fish since 2019.

(AP) - The snail darter, a tiny fish that notoriously blocked a federal dam project in Tennessee decades ago, should no longer be on the endangered species list, federal officials announced on Tuesday.Īrguing that the fish is no longer in danger of extinction, the U.S. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. The species was relisted as threatened in 1984 after being successfully transplanted into other river systems.This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. The word Tanasi derives from capital of the Cherokee Nation located on the Little Tennessee River where the species was discovered. They are largely preyed upon by banded sculpin. Snail darters have camouflage dorsal patterns and burrow in the substrate to conserve energy and hide from predators. The species’ diet consists mostly of snails and insects. The snail darter adult length ranges between 55 to 90 mm. The lifespan of the snail darter ranges between 2 to 4 years. Juveniles occupy slack water habitats and migrate upstream to the breeding ground. The snail darter spawns between February to mid-April with the female producing 600 eggs which drift downstream. The species inhabits large creeks or deeper portions of rivers and reservoirs with gravel and sand shoals substrate. The species was then transplanted into the Hiwassee River in southeastern Tennessee. Its native range was originally in the lower parts of the Little Tennessee River, the Sequatchie River, and in Chickamauga Creek, but was later eliminated from the Little Tennessee River by the completion of Tellico Dam. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tennessee Valley Authority, and Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency launched a recovery plan to preserve the snail darter by transferring the species to other river systems.

Endangered Species Act of 1973 by 1975 and was involved in a legal controversy leading to a Supreme Court ruling to approve the completion of Tellico Dam, which posed a risk of extinction for the snail darter by blocking its migratory route - see Tennessee Valley Authority v.

Discovered in 1973, the snail darter was listed under the U.S. It is in the perch family of the order Perciformes. The snail darter is a species of fish that is found in East Tennessee freshwater in the United States. Freebase (0.00 / 0 votes) Rate this definition: