Ariel Lavery: Hello, Austin!
Austin Carter: Hey Ariel! How's it going?
Ariel Lavery: It's going well, this is the first time we've been in the studio together in quite a while.
Austin Carter: It has, it's been a minute.
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Ariel Lavery: A lot has happened. The month of October especially of note. Britain was back in tumult again and got a new prime minister.
Austin Carter: We got a new Supreme Court Justice, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson had her first day on the bench at the Supreme Court.
Ariel Lavery: That's right. And mortgage rates hit a new 20 year high.
Austin Carter: And I guess you also celebrated a birthday.
Ariel Lavery: Yep. I turned 40. (laughs)
Austin Carter: Congratulations.
Ariel Lavery: Thank you. I can't believe it. I don't know if I feel 40 or not, but I guess I am happy to be where I'm at. What about you?
Austin Carter: Same old, same old for me. Just radio business in and out, playing around and hanging out with the family at night.
Ariel Lavery: Fun. Well, we are really here today not to just exchange pleasantries and highlight what's going on on the global stage. But to give you listeners a little bit of an update on the snail darter, one of the central characters in our series, the story of Tanasi. If you've listened to the entire series, you know that the snail darter had been petitioned for delisting, but it had not yet been removed from the endangered species list.
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Ariel Lavery: Well, that all changed on October 4, when the Secretary of the Interior, Deb Holland, announced its delisting.
Zygmunt Plater: I worry, the way this is being covered, is it's a great success.
Austin Carter: Ah, and I guess you spoke with Zyg Plater the lawyer who brought the case to the supreme court about this.
Ariel Lavery: Deb Holland called this a remarkable conservation milestone that tells a story about how controversy and polarization can evolve into cooperation and a big conservation success.
Ariel Lavery: Right. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency had a big celebration at a park next to the French Broad River which is one of the three rivers with significant populations of the snail darter.
Martha Williams with background guitar music: The snail darter has been, I think a poster species for the Endangered Species Act. And think about it, can now serve as a mascot for the Endangered Species Act success. After an extensive review of the best scientific and commercial information available, the Fish and Wildlife Service has determined…
Ariel Lavery: That was just a little clip I pulled from their YouTube channel.
Austin Carter: So from the stories you worked on, we kind of know that the maintenance of the snail darter is dependent on some human intervention. Right?
Ariel Lavery: Yeah. And Zyg thinks that the reporting that's been done has really mischaracterized the success.
Zygmunt Plater: Well, it's a success for the Clean Water Act because the river no longer is polluted. It is sort of a success for the Endangered Species Act.
Ariel Lavery: And maybe he says, sort of to reiterate what you said, that Zyg has called this a mitigated success in the past.
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Ariel Lavery: What was your involvement in petitioning to delist the fish? Because that's something that we haven't talked very much about.
Zygmunt Plater: No, that's a really significant question. Back in 1975, I worked incredibly hard to get the fish listed. I mean, my friends looked at me and said, Are you crazy? You worked so hard to list this species? Why are you petitioning to delist it? Well, look at the date. We filed the petition in June of 2019. And why did we do that? It turned out that we had heard that within the Trump administration there was a move to delist the species with no protections. And July 2019, we were looking at potentially another six years of this anti-regulation, anti conservation, deregulatory corporate focused administration. So this was a pre-emptive attempt.
Ariel Lavery: A pre-emptive attempt to delist the fish with protections to continue.
Austin Carter: I'm sure everything surrounding the snail darter case and the history that's involved here leads Zyg to have very complicated emotions about all of this.
Ariel Lavery: I'd say so.
Zygmunt Plater: I have to say I have very mixed feelings. I've been getting applause from friends and from people I don't know all over the country saying, oh, congratulations, you what a great success. And I look at the articles that have been written. And I've been talking to all the reporters saying that this is a very painful compromise.
Ariel Lavery: But you won't find that reporting anywhere.
Austin Carter: Maybe except here.
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Zygmunt Plater: God is trying to tell us something when there are creatures in a place that's very special. And the true story, it seems to me, is a warning…
(angsty guitare picking / Story of Tanasi theme starts)
Zygmunt Plater: …that you don't let politics override science. You don't let politics override public interest economics.
Arie Lavery: This is something we heard Zyg talking a lot about in this series, the metaphor of the little fish that pointed out the disappearance of this really special place, and was a stand-in for the populations of people who had lived in and cared for the river valley for eons. And out of this metaphor is an argument Zyg continues to make today.
Zygmunt Plater: Public interest economics are hard enough to bring out and, unfortunately, pretty easy to cover over. In the United States, there are more and more local community efforts based on real investigations, real science, real economics. The job of democracy will always be a tough one, and if the wisdom of local communities is ignored, you're going to continue to have disasters.
Austin Carter: Nobody knows the community as well as the people who live in it, so it seems to make sense that those people would be the ones who direct what happens in that community. Right?
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Ariel Lavery: Absolutely. And we remember Carolyn, who was one of the voices that fought so hard to save this place.
Austin Carter: Of course, yeah.
Ariel Lavery: Well, her story is now published in her very own book. It's called “Last Stand at Fork Creek: A Farm Family Fights to Save Their Land, Community, and Little Tennessee River,” and it can be purchased on Amazon. Before we go, we have one more big announcement to make. One that I'm not sure I'm so fond of.
Austin Carter: (Laughs) It's a difficult decision, right?
Ariel Lavery: Well, maybe a necessary one. And we're very sad to see you leave the podcast.
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Austin Carter: Yeah, I will be focusing on some of my other duties here at the radio station. We've got a spunky and small tight knit staff here and it's all hands on deck, but I will, I will miss our many explorations.
Ariel Lavery: Well, I gotta say, I'm very proud of everything that we were able to accomplish through COVID, through pregnancy, and the birth of a baby. I mean, there was a lot that happened in our first two seasons.
Austin Carter: Absolutely.
Ariel Lavery: And all the while you continued as Morning Edition host and keeping the radio station running. (Austin laughs) So I gotta hand it to you.
Austin Carter: Well, thank you.
Ariel Lavery: But this also reiterates that we need more help than ever, from you, listeners. You can support us through a donation, or you can help us tell the stories we're trying to share on this podcast. I am now actively working on the production of season three, and I'm looking for women. If you're a woman or you know a woman who wants to share their experience with healthcare in their rural area, we want to hear from you. You can email us at middleofeverywherepod@gmail.com. You can also send us a voice memo and maybe you'll hear your own voice in the next season. Or leave a comment on one of our social media sites at @middleofeverywherepod on Facebook and Instagram and @rural_stories on Twitter. Thanks for checking in with us, and I can't wait to be getting back with you in the spring.
Austin Carter: Thanks.
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