77-24-A1
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Snail Darters[edit]
Transcript[edit]Our little friends the snail darters are in the news again. Tragedy has befallen some of them. I'll be right back. A while back on one of these broadcasts, I reported that a $116 million dam of the Tennessee Valley Authority had been kept out of operation for about four years because of a tiny, minnow-type fish, the snail darter. Closing the dam and creating a lake to generate electric power would interfere with the snail darter spawning habits, and the snail darter is on the endangered species list. There are about 77 different kinds of darters, each differing in characteristics of color or markings. You and I would probably think they all look the same. They're about two inches in length and we probably couldn't tell them from a minnow or a guppy. The last time I mentioned them I reported that Congress had appropriated nine million dollars to try moving them to some other part of the Little Tennessee River or to some other river where other kinds of darters lived. The estimate was that there were about 10,000 of them left, so that prorated out to 900 per fish. Well they're back in the news and the first thing we learn is that there aren't 10,000, there’s only about 1400. Unless Congress has done some refiguring about that appropriation that makes them price out at about $6400 per fish. Maybe more because now there aren't 1400. That's why they're in the news. Wildlife scientists with the help of skin divers have been moving the fish to a new spawning area above the non-operating Telico Dam. In this operation, 94 of the nearly extinct creatures were killed in a foul up. About 600 had already been moved without trouble to the Hawasi River, the remainder were to be moved upstream on the Little Tennessee. Now if i'm right about the cost of this operation, we've just lost more than $16,000 worth of fish. But before our environmentalists get excited and declare that no one should have tried to move them, that it was the move that did them, in the scientists say no. It is suspected that the net the skin divers were using had a residue of poison left over from a previous operation. They were using the net to count and examine the catch when the fish began to belly up. There's no word as to whether anyone tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, or maybe I should say, mouth-to-gill. Out of this news story came an additional fact about snail darters. They are so named not because of any peculiar marking, but because of what they eat. Now that leaves me with a bothersome question: Has anyone taken a look to see if those snails they feed on are endangered by the dam? This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.
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