Wild and Scenic Whitewater
Words and Images by Tim Palmer
With a healthy sweep-stroke I pulled my vintage canoe into a quiet eddy at the base of ragged basalt cliffs that soared up to shaggy firs and hemlocks gripping ledges far above. Mule Creek Canyon, Blossom Bar, and other abrupt rapids of the Rogue River were now a day’s paddle behind me. Along with my wife, Ann Vileisis, who rowed our raft, I had cruised past the usual take-out at Foster Bar to continue downstream past the mouth of the Illinois River and into the narrows of Copper Canyon, where I caught the eddy.
I bobbed there in the shelter of the rocky shoreline outcrop for a moment of silence. And more than that: I paused for a moment of reverence.
There, at Copper Canyon, the Rogue River may have been lost to a dam if it had not been for the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.
Much like other proposals for dams that would have buried sensational whitewater on the White Salmon, Tuolumne, Middle Fork Feather, Snake, Cache la Poudre, Obed, and more, a hydroelectric proposal on the lower Rogue could have transformed that river’s most magnificent stretch of rapids upstream of the dam-site into another flatwater reservoir. Instead, the Rogue and all of those other streams were designated as National Wild and Scenic Rivers to keep their wildness intact, their flows fast and free, their habitat healthy, and their allure to paddlers alive for the next trip and the next generation.
In a bygone age of bipartisanship, this path-breaking protection measure was enacted in 1968 by a unanimous vote in the Senate and a 265–7 margin in the House. It has been expanded many times from an original twelve main-stems and tributaries to nearly 300 major rivers and branches. The Act’s 50th anniversary, this year, invites us to consider what has been gained and what could still be lost.
River runners were key catalysts for the Wild and Scenic program. Inveterate rafters and pioneering wildlife biologists John and Frank Craighead conceived the idea of a nationally recognized group of safeguarded rivers as they fought to spare Montana’s Middle Fork Flathead from damming in the 1950s. Then paddlers on the Allagash in Maine and the Current in Missouri were instrumental during the 1960s in building momentum toward nothing less than a new way of regarding rivers at the federal level.
Once passed by Congress, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was largely ignored until whitewater canoeist and biologist Jerry Meral wrote a letter to the American Whitewater Journal proposing that a nationwide organization be formed to advance the program. A discussion ensued, and as a result, 33 conservationists met in Denver and formed the American Rivers Conservation Council (now American Rivers), with a focused foundational goal of expanding the Wild and Scenic program.
As an early addition to the system, the Snake River in Hells Canyon was included after an Idaho boater had persuaded a young Sierra Club lawyer, Brock Evans, to appeal federal permits for a 600-foot-tall dam. This delayed the hydropower developers long enough for a Wild and Scenic campaign to culminate with Governor Cecil Andrus declaring that the dam would only be built “over my dead body.” Designation of the Snake spared the biggest whitewater in the West next to the Grand Canyon itself.
The stellar rapids of California’s Tuolumne were slated for damming and diverting in 1981 in what promised to be a repeat of Tuolumne losses stretching back to John Muir’s failed battle to protect Hetch Hetchy Valley — a place Muir compared favorably with Yosemite Valley. Just to its north, enchanting whitewater of the Stanislaus River — the most popular in the West at the time — had been dammed only the year before and, fighting despair, paddlers from Friends of the River and the Tuolumne Trust turned their attention to the neighboring Tuolumne with a masterful campaign. Their persuasiveness hinged on river guides who generated thousands of post cards written by passengers during lunch stops and mailed to Senator Pete Wilson, whose support was wavering but essential. Wild and Scenic designation saved the “T” in 1984.
Congress enacts Wild and Scenic designations for specified reaches of rivers, but streams can also be enrolled by the Secretary of the Interior if requested by a governor. Jerry Brown of California championed this approach for 1,300 miles of rivers in Northern California, including the region’s finest whitewater gems: the Cal Salmon, Klamath, Trinity and its forks, Middle Fork Eel, and the Smith, together with its North and South Fork canyons.
To be designated Wild and Scenic, a river must be free-flowing, which means no dams, and it must have one or more “outstandingly remarkable” qualities, specified as geology, wildlife, fish, history, recreation, scenery, or “other.” Congress cast a large net for the selection of rivers worthy of protection, and the natural qualities of these places benefit all. As American Whitewater Executive Director Mark Singleton reflected, “Some of the most cherished memories in our family come from time spent together on Wild and Scenic Rivers. They connect us to something much bigger than ourselves and have provided my children with experiences they could never get from a screen. Permanent protection makes the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act a one-of-a-kind legislative tool for conservation.”
Enrollment in the program bans construction of dams and requires management plans aimed at setting the stage for local governments to regulate development on flood plains, for avoiding pollution, for possible acquisition of river frontage as open space, for improvement of access facilities, for addressing conflicts between user groups such as jet boaters and paddlers, and for better management of recreational use.
By fits and starts, the system has grown to nearly 500 named rivers and tributaries in all. The Northwest, Alaska, and California have 70 percent of all the designated rivers. Oregon has the most streams, with 59. California has 45.
Alaska has the most mileage: 3,427. Idaho’s legendary whitewater reaches of the Salmon, Middle Fork Salmon, Selway, and Snake are all Wild and Scenic. Some eastern rivers are also designated including the Allagash, Farmington, Delaware, Obed, Chattooga, and Horsepasture Creek with its majestic waterfalls. Private land ownership in the East has tended to block many designations, however, criterion whitewater of the Appalachians such as the Youghiogheny, New, Gauley, and West Branch Penobscot Rivers are protected under other programs including state parks, national recreation areas, and a similar classification called “national rivers.”
Wild and Scenic status was essential to stopping dam proposals in the 1970s and 80s, and though that protection feels less pressing now that the age of big-dam building in America is on hold, it doesn’t mean that the dam threats won’t come back, or that other protection needs haven’t arisen in their place.
For example, as timber management reforms of the 1990s in the Pacific Northwest come under fire by industrial loggers perpetually wanting to increase cutting on federal land, status under the “wild” classification of the Act can safeguard public river corridors from clearcutting and also from new mining claims that otherwise endanger National Forests under the archaic Mining Law of 1872. Meanwhile, population growth — slated to double in the U.S. in the next 60 years or so — will trigger a new wave of dam proposals. And on top of it all, the climate crisis will deliver worsening floods and intensifying droughts, all likely to spur pressure for dams and diversions even where diligent protection efforts have succeeded. On California’s Merced River, for example, irrigators now want to rescind Wild and Scenic status for the lower end of the protected reach in order to raise an existing dam.
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is America’s foremost program for protecting rivers, but has it met expectations and ongoing needs for river conservation? Consider the numbers: The United States has 2.9 million miles of rivers and streams, but only 13,000 — or less than 0.4 percent of them — are Wild and Scenic. Of 76 rivers identified as top priorities for protection in the original Department of the Interior study for the program, only 24 have been designated, the rest falling victim to political opposition in rural America.
The Wild and Scenic program has not become the “complement” to dammed and developed mileage that was prescribed with the original legislation. Nationwide, over 80,000 sizable dams have been built, 75 percent of our stream mileage is polluted, and 235,000 miles have been channelized, not to speak of a vast majority of the mileage that’s diminished by development, farming without buffers, clearcut logging, and mining resulting in toxic spills and mountaintop removal. By any measure, the protected share of the nation’s waterways is small. Some regions are scarcely represented at all — the politically red expanses of the South, Midwest and Great Plains, and also steeper terrain spawning fabulous whitewater in New York, Maine, West Virginia, Utah, and Colorado.
The protection needs of our finest rivers can also be addressed through other means, such as the Clean Water Act, state-designated “wild trout waters” that limit damaging hatchery operations, and open space campaigns by land trusts, but none have the teeth or the broad reach of Wild and Scenic status. Look-alike programs enacted by state legislatures were once seen as suitable alternatives to national Wild and Scenic status, but unfortunately most of those efforts have faded through attrition of enlightened bureaucrats, financial neglect, or outright hostility after right-wing takeovers of state resource agencies. Clearly, national Wild and Scenic River designation remains the best means of safeguarding natural rivers.
While the political atmosphere of 2018 in our nation’s capital presents formidable obstacles, and while widespread progress will likely have to wait until an electoral makeover puts more people in office who care about the health of rivers, active campaigns are underway to build long-term support for adding worthy streams to the Wild and Scenic program.
In Washington state, American Whitewater leads a campaign to set aside a stunning radial complex of waterways plunging toward sea level from skyscraping peaks of the Olympic Mountains. In Montana, American Rivers and a coalition including American Whitewater seek designation of 600 miles of streams with exquisite rapids and windings of the Blackfoot, Smith, Dearborn, Gallatin, and Madison.
Just a few years after the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was passed, and when the era of big-dam construction was still in full swing, I launched a nationwide tour to paddle on and photograph streams that were doomed to the flatwater of dams still being built or planned, and I tempered that heartbreaking tour of American rivers by also seeking out the gems that were protected or proposed for Wild and Scenic status. I visited the Jackson River in Virginia, which was soon lost to Gathright Dam, and also the Chattooga, which was saved. I sought out the Applegate in Oregon, which was dammed, and also ran the neighboring whitewater of the Illinois, which was made Wild and Scenic in 1984. The Stanislaus of California was tragically and unnecessarily entombed under 700 feet of flatwater in 1980, but the nearby Tuolumne, Merced, Kings, and Kern were all saved with spirited campaigns by paddlers, outfitters, and river aficionados of all kinds, setting these rivers aside as lifelines of the natural world.
Protection for many of these rivers could not have been accomplished without the leadership and engagement of river runners, and the future of dozens of streams still at stake will need help from people who know their waters firsthand. As Mark Singleton has said, “People only love what they know, and getting out on the water is one of the best ways to get to know a river.”
Joining efforts to add some of our finest whitewater to the nation’s premier program for river protection is a great way to ensure that the best streams will be available for everybody in the challenging years ahead.
Tim Palmer is the author of Wild and Scenic Rivers: An American Legacy, and also Field Guide to California Rivers, Field Guide to Oregon Rivers, and 22 other books. He has been involved with the Wild and Scenic Rivers program almost since its founding. See Tim’s work at www.timpalmer.org.
