Tennessee Snail Darter No Longer a Threatened Species

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has declared that the little fish that almost stopped completion of the Tellico Dam has recovered.

The snail darter, the small freshwater fish made famous by Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, is no longer in danger of becoming endangered and has been removed from the list of "threatened" species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Department of Interior announced yesterday.

The snail darter was initially listed as an "endangered" species in 1975, shortly after it was first discovered. The darter's discovery, and rarity, was seized upon by opponents of the TVA's proposed Tellico Dam as a way to stop the Tennessee project. The resulting litigation went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which declared that the ESA barred completion of the dam if doing so would modify or destroy the snail darter's habitat.

After the Court's decision in TVA v. Hill, Congress created a potential work-around for important projects–the creation of a committee known as the "God Squad" that could exempt projects from the ESA's strictures. And when no exemption for the Tellico Dam was forthcoming, Congress acted directly at the urging of a then-junior Congressman from Tennessee to mandate the dam's completion. That Congressman was Al Gore.

It turned out that the darter may not have been in as much jeopardy of extinction as was originally thought, as it was soon discovered in other parts of the southeastern United States. These discoveries, and successful efforts to transfer and build darter populations  in other waterways, led the FWS to downgrade the fish from from "endangered" to "threatened" in 1984. Subsequent conservation efforts helped lead to the darter's eventual recovery, according to the FWS.

The federal government is celebrating the snail darter's recovery as proof that the ESA works to conserve species. Others of us are not so convinced of the Act's effectiveness.

Comments

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Species evolve to fill a niche, and when the niche disappears or changes, the species disappears or evolves. When you have to look as hard as was done for this species, and miss all the other niches it filled, you’re missing the point. These trivial differences between volatile species aren’t hidden treasures waiting to be mined to find cancer cures; they are just natural differences to fill naturally different niches, and when the niches go away or change and take the species with them, it is no loss of diversity. More to the point, it prevents nature from evolving. The ESA only protects the status quo by hurting the future.

[Sarcastr0]

This is some really bad ecology. Biodiversity is not some conservation law,

species go away due to mankind’s expansion, because they go quickly and are replaced with like asphalt and glass. Or just overexploitstion.

What was the new dodo?

[Squirrelloid]

I feel like you’re strawmanning A AB AC… here a bit. Not saying he’s wholly right, but he has some valid points in there.

Most importantly, protecting the status quo is just that, protecting the status quo. Not all extinctions are human-caused (even if many are), and not all ‘conservation’ activities are designed to prevent extinction. Frequently, conservation attempts to maintain the ecological character of an area, regardless of whether that area would be naturally changing on its own.

Which is not to say that we shouldn’t be aware of the large impact humans have on natural systems, but insisting on stasis isn’t natural either (and is a different form of impact humans have on natural systems).

Species associate and disassociate across sub-evolutionary timescales. Even tree pollen data for the last hundred thousand years show repeated reshuffling of ecological community membership, and that’s for long-lived trees! (One of the largest impacts humans have is almost certainly land use, because it blocks movement of species with asphalt, maintained lawns, gardens, etc…)

Not to say that A AB AC… is wholly right either. When humans cause niches to disappear, it is a harm caused by humans. Being aware that we are doing that isn’t a bad thing. (Properly weighing the existential value of a species like the Snail Darter is a tough problem that deserves better than an absolutist stance either way).

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Looks like snail darter’s back on the menu, boys!

[Stephen Lathrop]

These trivial differences between volatile species aren’t hidden treasures waiting to be mined to find cancer cures; they are just natural differences to fill naturally different niches, and when the niches go away or change and take the species with them, it is no loss of diversity. More to the point, it prevents nature from evolving.

That seems to misunderstand natural selection, which works in multiple ways. One way it can work is to accommodate a species to gradual environmental change, or new threats of predation, or an onset of parasitism, or what have you, by the luck of the draw, by awaiting a chance mutation to arrive and save the day after a challenging environmental change occurs. That was thought by many to be the principal way natural selection worked, and a great many folks still understand it that way. Maybe that is you.

Another way to think about natural selection is to recognize that mutations happen continuously, whether they are needed or not. That process creates genetic diversity not only between species, but also among individual members of the same species. The larger the population of a species, and the longer it has stayed populous, the greater the collection of possibly-irrelevant mutations among species members becomes, just by the operation of that chance mutation process over time.

To the extent that chance mutations prove benign, and do not impair natural selection, that large collection of variants works as a reserve of vital resources to apply against happenstance. It greatly improves the chances that if some change in conditions occurs, an existing and previously-irrelevant but newly-helpful genetic characteristic may quickly spread through the species by natural selection to ease the problem. Moreover, sexual reproduction is such a potent means to shuffle the genetic deck, that multiple partly-helpful pre-existing traits can be fairly quickly combined to produce mutually reinforcing advantages.

Understood that way, it is possible to see that with a diverse reservoir of genetic variants pre-existing among a populous species, helpful responses by natural selection may happen surprisingly quickly. The ability to do that makes species survival much more robust than it would otherwise be—no need to await a timely random beneficial mutation.

Conversely, if a species is few in numbers, or poor in pre-existing variants, it remains more vulnerable to extinction by environmental challenges which take it unprepared. So the notions quoted above from your comment are mistaken in multiple ways. Especially, every species loss is a notable loss of potentially useful diversity—diversity which may have taken a very long interval of random benign mutations to achieve.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

No, species loss is not a loss of natural diversity. Species arise as nature creates new niches, and species disappear as nature changes or discards those niches. It happens all the time, mostly without man ever noticing. It would happen more often if man weren’t preserving species that nature no longer needs.

[Nige]

Not sure what creatures have managed to succesfully evolved to survive bulldozers and asphalt, can’t wait to find out.

[Currentsitguy]

To be fair, there are plenty. Cities and suburbs are full of various birds, squirrels, etc. The coyote has proven to be perfectly at home in developed areas, I could go on. I think the point is Human activities don’t stop evolutionary selection, nothing can stop that. All humans do is to create their own environmental pressures for life to adapt to. Some will, others will not.

Do I consider the loss of species a tragedy? Definitely I do, but I understand that humans are a part of nature and that it is impossible for life to exist without having an impact on the environment as a whole.

I am very disturbed by the belief that somehow humans exist outside of the natural order of things.

[Sarcastr0]

Survive in is not the same as evolve.

All humans do is to create their own environmental pressures for life to adapt to. Some will, others will not.
By this logic, a nuclear bomb doesn’t really mess with nature; it just creates it’s own environmental pressures.

Look up any recent report on biodiversity trends. Just read *something* on the subject before delving into pop-ecology. I beg you.

[Currentsitguy]

I think you misinterpret what I’m saying. What I was trying to say is environmental pressure is environmental pressure, regardless of the source, natural or created and evolution proceeds either way. Life doesn’t particularly care about the source of its stress.

When a beaver builds a dam, for example, the pond created is an absolute disaster for what lived there beforehand, yet it adapts. Some life copes, and some is destroyed, yet others have adapted so that it can only exist in those ponds.

Humans do the same thing, albeit on a much larger scale. We’re really go at using tools to extend our impact. All life adapts and modifies their environment to be more well suited to their needs.

I wasn’t attempting to make a positive or negative assessment of that observation, I was merely trying to point out it’s all the same as far as nature is concerned.

[Reallynotbob]

Okay, but that’s a little panglossian isn’t it? “What is, is, and is the best of all possible worlds because it could never have been otherwise.”

Yes, the planet will continue in some form. If your argument is that we should celebrate the ascendance of coyotes, rats, roaches, pigeons, and city-dwelling monkeys at the expense of beautiful and exotic, but delicate, creatures… be my guest. Hell, feel free to bulldoze the redwood forests while you’re at it. They’ll grow back. Eventually.

[Squirrelloid]

Except he’s not passing moral judgment on it, just stating how it is. It’s not the best or the worst possible world, it’s just the world.

I will note that every mass extinction has been followed by radiations of marvelous diversity. There’s a mass extinction going on now. Evolution works on large timescales, so we won’t live to see the full consequences of that mass extinction. But there will likely be new beautiful and exotic creatures eventually that we can’t even imagine today. It’s Bastiat’s seen and unseen on a remarkable scale. We see what is lost now, but humans as a species might not even be around to see what is gained.

[Reallynotbob]

The comment thread began with an argument that species loss is not a loss of biodiversity and an assertion that humankind inhibits actual biodiversity through protective regulations like the ESA. Currentsitguy amplified that argument on the ground that whatever humans do should not be judged morally because hey, our choices can also be cast as evolutionary pressures.

So I agree with you — there’s moral component to these commenters’ viewpoint at all.

[Reallynotbob]

…*no* moral component…

[Stephen Lathrop]

Currentsitguy — You would be unhappy with the world delivered by beavers operating on the global scale which human engineering has achieved. Especially if the beavers had also figured out how to mechanize their activities, and control them with computers.

With regard to ecology, scale and speed both matter critically. A human population much smaller than it is now could pretty much do what it wanted, without concern for ecological effects. That is basically the tale of the world’s natural environment prior to the 19th century.

From where we stand now, there is no choice except to manage human activities with ecology foremost in mind; I predict even that cannot work without notable reduction in a global developed population which apparently has already grown large enough to overshoot what I take to be ecological safety limits.

Unfortunately, ecological insight seems not to come naturally to folks accustomed to either urban life, or to folks accustomed to the more rarified versions of rural life. Among the former, almost nothing ecologically benign is even visible, yet nothing seems to be going visibly wrong. That is an illusion, of course. Urban dwellers are mostly physically removed from the ecological results of their activities, and thus can’t notice those effects as they happen. Among the latter, the rural dwellers, almost everything still looks mostly ecologically healthy, and no cause for alarm. But that is a rapidly shrinking and already small part of the world’s population.

Ecological alarmists tend to come from the population in between— the segment at the outer edges of urban experience, but also not profoundly rural. It also comes somewhat from some urbanites with resources to enable routine time spent outside urban limits. Those two groups have been the people best positioned to notice ongoing baleful effects of human activity on ecological communities.

Such border-residents are not now a naturally influential group. When they speak among others, their messages seem inconvenient and thus unwelcome. They will probably remain a relatively un-influential minority for the foreseeable future. There is a notable danger that such a future will last so long that others will not heed justified warnings until ecologically destructive activities have gone past recoverable limits.

The requirement seems to be massively-agreed upon policy. The only power presently visible to encourage that kind of agreement is the natural power to deliver expense, inconvenience, malfunction, and catastrophe. That the coping mechanism remains so paradoxical makes the problem more urgent.

[Nige]

Humans wouldn’t be the first species that ended up destroying itself by destroying the ecosystems it depends on to survive, just the only one that should have been smart enough to know better and to do it on a global scale.

[David Nieporent]

Not sure what creatures have managed to succesfully evolved to survive bulldozers and asphalt, can’t wait to find out.

Cockroaches.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nice — Pigeons come to mind. But that is partly because concrete and asphalt rather closely resemble the cliffside natural conditions they evolved to take advantage of.

[Squirrelloid]

Err.. I think you’re a little too cavalier about the speed at which evolution is working here. Occupation of a new niche is only ‘rapid’ in geological time.

And every “species” loss is a loss of diversity. That doesn’t make it good or bad, but it’s still true.

I mean, the environmental doomsayers are overstating the case, but that doesn’t mean there’s no ‘there’ there.

[Nige]

No, it does make it bad, very very bad, and if you want to wait until things get bad enough for you to agree that okay, now they’re bad enough, it’ll probably be too late.

[Squirrelloid]

Too late for what?

Also, species extinctions are inevitable. Every species that exists now will go extinct with probability 1. Every species that will evolve in the future will go extinct with probability 1.

Does biodiversity in an area go down when a species goes extinct (locally or globally)? Absolutely. But on its own that’s neither good or bad. Neither ecology nor evolution has an intrinsic moral component.

So ‘good or bad for what?’ should be the first question, and in the final analysis, many species extinctions haven’t been a big deal. (Still a loss of biodiversity, but no real implications or consequences). Some species extinctions will be hugely consequential, and those consequences could variously be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending on what your framework is for evaluating them. (African Elephants going extinct would be bad for the Savannah as an ecosystem, since they maintain that ecosystem by uprooting trees. But that’s a specific kind of bad, not some global moral evil).

To the extent that people impute moral value to biodiversity, it’s an aesthetic judgment, not an intrinsic part of what biodiversity represents.

[Stephen Lathrop]

To the extent that people impute moral value to biodiversity, it’s an aesthetic judgment, not an intrinsic part of what biodiversity represents.

The moral value we ascribe to biodiversity ought to be seen as rooted in moral obligations humans owe to each other. I am speaking literally, not metaphorically.

A person’s action taken knowingly against biodiversity threatens other humans. We all live in the same global ecosystem, which our species evolved to take advantage of. Natural selection tailored us to the natural environments in which we find ourselves. If some nincompoop with a yen for improvement chooses to disregard biodiversity, or even to engineer it without an eraser on his pencil, then that threatens my fitness for my environment. His moral obligation is not to do that, at least not as an individualist and without society’s considered consent. It is rather like the NAP, but far more important.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Squirrelloid — Among insects evolution has been shown to work quite effectively over a matter of decades or less, to instill genetically mediated resistance to pesticides, for instance. Among micro-organisms, evolution can work much faster than that. Fail to take your full regimen of antibiotics and you invite prompt creation of a drug-resistant strain of bacteria you may have to live with for life.

Size of populations, existing genetic diversity among members of populations, and frequency of reproduction seem to be major factors determining the speed of evolution. Rats and mice have been shown to evolve notable new traits during geologically trivial time intervals, including intervals shorter than a human life span.

[John F. Carr]

Very few endangered species are helped by government listing. Most of the time the endangered designation is an excuse for people to throw sand in the gears of development. Occasionally you get a success story like the California Condor, which is still endangered but would be extinct without active intervention. It took active help, not merely listing, to save the condor. (I like vultures and I am happy to have seen all three continental US species in the wild.)

[The Margrave of Azilia]

If you didn’t like vultures you wouldn’t be on a legal blog.

Just a little joke, please don’t sue!

[John F. Carr]

Sue? I will rip out your liver with my beak!

Just a little joke. I don’t like liver.

[SIV]

The remaining California Condors are essentially domesticated animals now.

[Jerry B.]

So I can have snail darters for supper tomorrow? I hear they’re yummy.

[StellaLink_the dog]

“I hear they’re yummy.”
From whom did you hear that? One of the never identified knobs whispering in Donald Trump’s ear, perhaps?

[Longtobefree]

If the EPA had been around to save the dinosaurs, would we even have had global warming?

[Nige]

If the EPA hae been around in the time of the dinosaurs the Republicans would have denied the existence of the comet and blocked legislation and launched court cases to stop the the CometWreckerRocket Project.

[Squirrelloid]

Please, the Republicans would have voted the meteor in as president.

(And it was a meteor, not a comet).

[Nige]

Dino Democrats left helpless in the face of Dino Republican intransigence as party is split by bitter meteor/comet debate.

[John F. Carr]

Save the dinosaurs? We’d have 60 million years of lawsuits asking courts to decide whether there was extraterritorial jurisdiction over an event that was arguably complete when the impactor was set in motion towards earth but which undeniably had an effect on North America. Does the existence of a domestic effect grant jurisdiction regardless of intent, following the Commerce Clause line of reasoning? Does Due Process require at least negligence or possibly intent to interfere with the wetlands of the proto-United States? Does it matter if a migratory bird was harmed?

(In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for “taking” a migratory bird. The felony counts were unrelated to the environmental harm.)

[StellaLink_the dog]

We should remember that the discovery of the snail darter and subsequent events, including the dishonorable participation of serial flunky Al Gore, had absolutely nothing to do with the opposition to the construction of the Tellico Dam other than that the long-time opponents of the dam construction perceived it to be a silver bullet. How could a project with no purpose other than enriching some land owners at the expense of others continue when it was clearly in violation of federal law? Remember: the justification for the project was to finish off the last remnant of the Little Tennessee River for the benefit of investors in possible recreational properties and opportunities: no electricity, no flood control, no nothing other than the creation of a recreational lake.

Did the darter serve to throw “sand in the gears of development?”
Absolutely. Throwing sand in the gears of developing the Tellico Dam was a worthy cause.

[Stephen Lathrop]

The comments show what a challenge lies ahead. There are assorted commenters here who appear pre-motivated to reject the notion of ecology. That motivation gets defended with arbitrary assertions, and made-up quasi-facts selected for no other reason than a hope they will sound plausible among a like-minded audience. Both experience and evidence to support the anti-ecology point of view are already absent among this group, which suggests that attempts to add either experience or evidence to their thinking will be rejected as unnecessary. A natural outcome as imposing as general ecological collapse might get their attention, but that obviously cannot be part of a method for avoiding such a catastrophe. Anyone have any ideas how to improve communication on the subject of ecology?