Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

In that same year, 1973, a professor of zoology from the University of Tennessee was snorkeling around in the Little Tennessee when a small fish, resembling a dace, darted out from under a rock in front of his face and gulped a snail. The zoologist, whose name was David Etnier, followed the fish until he could get a good look at it. He had never seen one like it before. After some taxonomic investigation, the fish was identified as a snail darter—a species that appeared to inhabit only a portion of the Little Tennessee, mainly the taking area of Tellico Dam. Its numbers estimated to be in the low thousands, its habitat apparently confined to one place, the darter seemed eligible for classification as an endangered species. Before the act, that would have meant merely that the fish was probably doomed. Now it meant, by law, that “protection of habitat . . . critical to [its] continued existence” was federal government’s number-one priority.