Daily Journal: A Phony Fish Story Reveals the Need for Endangered Species Act Reform to Unleash American Energy
A remarkable story emerged as The New York Times rewrote an infamous 1970s trope when it revealed that scientists had invented an ‘endangered species’ — a tiny fish called the snail darter — to stop a southeastern energy project. “Saving” the snail darter became a model for how to leverage laws designed to protect the environment to kill energy and development projects disfavored by radical activists. The Trump Administration should use the revelation that the snail darter was a fabrication — a proverbial “fish story” — to push for reforms to the Endangered Species Act to prevent future sabotage of energy production and productive use of land.
In the 1970s, fledgling left-wing environmentalists, fresh off recent early wins in the creation of the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act (ESA), wanted to demonstrate the power of their new legal weapons. They “believed capitalism [would] collapse because the pollution produced by its heedless overconsumption [would] build to an ecological breaking point,” as Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine, noted. For them, blocking energy production and the productive use of land were necessary, if not required, to save Earth from the horrors of the American free market.
The environmentalists turned their attention to Tennessee’s planned Tellico Dam as one of their first targets. The dam, an important energy project in the rural Tennessee Valley, was nearing completion. But that dam would push us closer to that “ecological breaking point” in ’70s environmentalists’ eyes — this change to the environment, like all use of land, would change the status quo. Thus, the need to stop it.
Searching for a way to stop the project, the Times reports that a dam opponent discovered an unfamiliar fish in the Little Tennessee River near the under-construction Tellico Dam. That opponent labeled the fish a “snail darter,” which the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service eagerly declared an “endangered species.” Under the ESA, saving the snail darter was more important than bringing power and light to rural Americans. It was then used as the basis for an ESA lawsuit to stop the building of the dam. To allow the dam would jeopardize this never-before-seen supposedly “endangered” fish’s continued existence.
The case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, and in TVA v. Hill, the Court ruled in favor of the purportedly endangered fish and against the dam’s construction, stating that the ESA was designed to protect listed species, “whatever the cost.”
Afterward, Congress was forced to amend the ESA to allow the Tellico Dam project to go forward. But Congress did not do the hard work of reforming the law more generally to ensure other important energy and land use efforts like the dam were not blocked by the ESA in the future. Over the last 47 years, that failure has led to the loss of countless energy projects and productive land use plans, to the tune of billions of dollars, all killed as a sacrifice to ESA “listed species” like the so-called snail darter.
And now we know, thanks to the New York Times, that this snail darter was not a new or endangered fish at all. The snail darter was a common fish in the south — a “stargazing darter” fish, according to Dr. Thomas Near of the Yale Peabody Museum. A fish that is and was in no way endangered or threatened. Meanwhile, the phony fish’s legacy swims on, thanks to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the ESA in TVA v. Hill, which means that protections of listed species must be adopted “whatever the cost.”
That phrase, “whatever the cost,” leads to the ESA being weaponized against property owners and energy-producing companies to extract onerous concessions that slow down and drive up the costs of energy and land use projects or stop those projects altogether. This is exactly the goal of too many environmentalists, especially those in the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, who oppose any land use activities or resource development.
President Donald Trump knows what it is like to be the victim of the weaponization of the laws. So do those who end up in the crosshairs of environmentalist bureaucrats and non-governmental organizations who use the ESA to crush cheap energy costs and stop the productive use of land. The Trump Administration must ensure that Congress reforms the ESA and ends how bureaucrats have used it to seize private property, prevent energy and economic development, and interfere with the states’ proper authority to manage their wildlife.
The path forward is clear. Now it’s up to the Trump Administration’s leaders to see that meaningful legislative reform of the ESA, not just regulatory reform that the next administration can roll back, gets done. That is how President Trump can unleash American energy.
This op-ed originally appeared in Daily Journal on February 6, 2025.
