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Alex Armlovich is at TRB (+ hiring!)
@aarmlovi
NYT is softening every edge in the framing but this article is a bombshell Conclusive evidence that environmental scientists have been willing to use the ESA to knowingly invent "conservation species" and then (after passage in 1970) using the newly created NEPA to litigate
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David Schleicher
@ProfSchleich
Wait, there is no such thing as a snail darter?!?!? @nicholas_bagley
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David Watson 🥑
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Alex Armlovich is at TRB (+ hiring!)
@aarmlovi
Yikes. Imagine being the guy in 2015 who discovers a "snail darter" clone far from where it could possibly be located, and immediately realizing a DNA test will likely prove the snail darter was a faked species in 1973
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Alex Armlovich is at TRB (+ hiring!)
@aarmlovi
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Jeff
@SEAsheltie
Replying to @aarmlovi
For anyone curious where @ProfSchleich and Alex saw the above, here's a gift link. nytimes.com/2025/01/03/sci
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Alex Armlovich is at TRB (+ hiring!)
@aarmlovi
And it's not some ancient thing that happened once because of some radical 1970s professors Dr. Plater is furious with Dr. Near for telling the truth about the snail darter and revealing the tricks of the trade before DNA testing
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Jeff
@SEAsheltie
Replying to @SEAsheltie @aarmlovi and @ProfSchleich
This part was especially infuriating. The one bad-faith biologist is explicitly trying to warn off the one who realized it wasn't a species, purely by appealing to implications for ESA litigation. 😡
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Nick
@Nick_from_Texas
Did activists have more credibility in the past? Today's activists just seem to be misinformed people with too much free time who tend to accidently make the situation worse for their cause instead of better. Like those anti-nuclear activists that created climate change.
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Liz🌵
@ksliz22
I think it’s more telling that everyone was perfectly flooding Cherokee land and ancestral sites, but would pause for a possibly endangered species.
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Alex Armlovich is at TRB (+ hiring!)
@aarmlovi
Yeah!! Archeological sites are legit. Totally makes sense to scope things out and avoid irreversible decisions. (Idk if inundation can actually preserve some sites or not? Maybe if it's fully buried?) But you're absolutely right, it's telling
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sam
@sam_d_1995
this reminds me of how the MD purple line was delayed because of a lawsuit for a microscopic shrimp-like creature nearby. insane stuff all around
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Gary Winslett 🌐🇺🇸
@GaryWinslett
Until this story, I was in favor of reforming but not necessarily repealing NEPA. Now, I’d still support reform but I’m just as good with burning it. If this is what it defends, it isn’t worth having.
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John Hinchliff
@J_E_J_H
Same with the Devils Hole pupfish. Which is a heavily inbred population. It’s why every attempt to make a second population “fails” because the species becomes “impure” and regains its pelvic fins.
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Dean A S C
@deanasc1
Massachusetts towns like Wenham have been using the not endangered blue salamander as an excuse to keep new houses from going up. The box turtle was also used to block development until developers pointed out that all the denied permits from confirmed turtle sightings were
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Debangshu Mukherjee
@dbngsh_mkhrj
Read the article recently. It’s a good case for why public policy should be decided by politicians, not by scientists. Scientists should be advisors, not policy makers.
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RodeoProfessor
@RodeoProfessor
This is a huge bummer. The ESA is incredibly important. But what was once bipartisan has turned into an ugly mix of forever litigation, NGOs (often from far away from the communities that bear the impacts of their lawsuits), and activists. We have to go back to a time when
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Nuclear Herbs
@NuclearHerbs
Remarkably, we have taxpayer dollars funding construction projects, environmental groups, and lawyers in court arguing against each other. Any wonder why we're $36T in debt?
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Jim McCarthy
@JMacNYC
Hard to overstate how much media agitprop the snail darter generated in the '70s/'80s. In a just world, NYT would go back and add an editor's note to every last one of these indicating it was total bunk all along.
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Patrick McKay
@pa_mckay
As a motorized recreation advocate fighting to keep Jeep trails open on public lands in the west, I'm convinced that much of wildlife biology is just politically driven lies. For example, I'm a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging a BLM decision to close hundreds of miles of Jeep
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Greg
@vvrabbi
this is what they did with the southern california steelhead acting like it was its own species of steel head faf
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Higgsy
@higgsyrnr
I thought everybodg knew this. Yes environmentalists just make shit up that's the whole point. It's communism wrapped in "science" and it's a political weapon.
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Skip porter-emeritus professor
@skip_porter
So, you’ve found a fish never seen before, why conclude it is the last one and not the first one?? You think evolution has stopped?? They’re likely showing up everywhere, no need to worry that the damn is killing the last one!! Think!!
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Steve MacQueen
@SteveMacQueen32
The Sierra Club and the Cove Point Natural Heritage Trust extorted $millions from the owners of the LNG terminal on the Chesapeake Bay, mainly because of a Tiger Beetle habitat. Also, a major east coast fiber optic project was halted because of the Bog Turtle. Worth it?
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Joss Sheldon
@JossSheldon
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L.J. Cox
@ljcox1
ESA is a joke - who gives a shit if the yellow bellied red crested southern Florida salamander goes extinct. Do people now realize that species come and go and that's called life. There are 760 different species of just salamander. We lose 40 or 50, so what? Any dinosaurs around?
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Dr. Hunter Howell
@HunterH0well
This is not conclusive evidence, and scientist disagree on what constitutes a species as it’s a man made concept. That doesn’t make anything they were doing nefarious, it’s just academic debate, and many species have been reclassified using genetics. This isn’t a conspiracy
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John Wolthuis
@thuddwhirr
I thought it was awfully convenient that there was a super rare buckwheat species that only grew near lithium mines that were midway through their permitting process.
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Tim Portantno
@TimPortantno
Next thing you'll tell me that scientists are just people and that science involves "proof" and not unquestionable proclamations, but I'm pretty sure if a venerated Marine Biologist says there's a snail darter, some snails are getting darted
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Thaddaeus Vinson
@TCarlVinson
There is an interesting piece of fiction titled “Open Season” by C.J. Box that explores the unintended consequences of the ESA against the backdrop of a pipeline project, murder, and a game warden caught in the middle of it all.
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Nigel Crapspray
@nigelcrapspray
This has as much to do with people's misunderstanding of species taxonomy as with anything else. Taxonomy (describing new species) is as much art as science. We're only at the beginning of seeing the impacts of fully genomic based taxonomy.
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David Mongan
@LawyerDave1
The controversial existence of the "snail darter" goes back about 40 years. Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert covered it in 1986!
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Lucas B
@LukeBouck
I thought there were also economic issues with the dam, no? At least this was the Carter administration’s take at the time. From the wiki page:
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Chase Brownstein
@ChaseBrownstein
Hey pal, as someone in this research group, maybe read the academic paper. If you did instead of spouting off, you'd realize that the species the Snail Darter is a part of is also imperiled, which justifies what was done. Stick to the stuff you know about, for everyone's sake
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Moose
@mmoooose
Chuds to the left of me, chuds to the right. Lots of left wing chuds in the environmental movement.
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TMac.
@tmcq3
Interesting read. Figured activists and lawyers would lie to get to court.
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Kyle
@Watrous15
Same thing in the 1990s with the Spotted Owl in order to shut down the logging industry in the northwest. Recently they finally admitted that it was never endangered by logging but it served its purpose. Mills shut down, changed economy in the rural areas of the northwest.
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