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The Tellico Dam project was also controversial because of the risk it was believed to pose to the endangered snail darter fish species. Environmentalist groups took the TVA to court as a means to halt the project and protect the snail darter. The court action delayed the final completion of the dam for over two years.
The snail darter was a federally protected species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 between 1975 and 2022 as a result of habitat destruction from the completion of the Tellico Dam. Another factor in the decline of snail darters is siltation, which degrades spawning habitat and food availability.
Snail darter, Percina tanasi The snail darter controversy related to the discovery in 1973 of an endangered species during the construction of the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River; the dam project had been authorized and begun before passage of protective environmental legislation.
The proposed project to build the dam and reservoir was the subject of environmental controversy during the 1970s because of the discovery of the snail darter, an endangered species. [8] It was the first major legal challenge to the Endangered Species Act .
The Citico darter is an endangered species found only in several isolated locations in east Tennessee: Abrams Creek, Citico Creek, and the Tellico River. [3] The fish was extirpated from Abrams Creek in the 1950s when the stream was chemically treated to remove all rough fish viewed as competition for the rainbow trout. [4]
The Tellico River and its main tributaries are renowned for their brook, brown, and rainbow trout fishing. Upstream from Tellico Lake, above Tellico Plains, Tennessee, the Tellico is a premier trout stream. It meanders through a mountain gorge before reaching the broad plains downstream of Tellico Plains.
Tellico Village was created along the shores of Tellico Lake, which was formed due to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) damming the Little Tennessee River at its confluence with the Tennessee River. Tellico Dam was completed in November 1979 after a long battle, which involved the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and a fish called the snail ...
In the Federal Register, the FWS ruled that the species was indeed endangered and designated mile 0.5 to 17 of the Little Tennessee River as critical habitat for snail darters. TVA rejected the Fish and Wildlife Service's interpretation of ESA and continued to receive funding for the Tellico Dam.