In the 1970s, the discovery of the Tennessee snail darter in the Tellico River was used to halt completion of the Tellico Dam under the Endangered Species Act (a tale many law students learn in ...

David Etnier, a dam opponent and a zoologist at the University of Tennessee, went snorkeling with students in the Little Tennessee River at Coytee Spring, not far from Tellico. There, they found a ...

More Valentine Chapuis/Getty Images The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) began building the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River in 1967. In 1973, during construction, a group of University ...

The fish held up construction of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee for more than two years as biologists and others fought to protect its only known habitat, the free-flowing Little Tennessee River.