Quartzville Creek in Oregon is one of the few streams officially protected by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act / BLM, Bob Wick

Rivulets of snowmelt and pelting spring rains, and what it’s given by tributaries named Bear, Trout, Little Snake, and Elk, feed the Yampa River as it bends, drops, turns, and jumps for 250 miles from its headwaters in central Colorado to the Utah border. There, at a place known as Echo Park for obvious reasons, the last major undammed river in the Colorado River system dumps its muddy fill into the Green River.

It’s a wild, personable river that Page Stegner (the son of author Wallace Stegner) has described as a “geezer’s delight, mild, gentle, benign, hospitable, without a rapid of worthy of the designation except Warm Springs.” The Yampa is an outlier though, with no significant dams or diversions to block or drain its waters as it winds its way through the stony landscape of Dinosaur National Monument. There, the varnished-striped sandstone cliffs rise to 1,700 feet, with patches of beach held in place by spreading cottonwood willow, invasive tamarisk, and meadows of cheat grass. Side canyons are filled with netleaf hackberry and boxelder amidst the boulder-clogged drainages.

Invisible beneath the murky waters, the river is home to ancient fish species such as the endangered Colorado pikeminnow and roundtail chub. They are admittedly perplexing, odd-looking fish.  The pikeminnow, for instance, can reach 3 feet in length, making a mockery of its status as a minnow.

Floating down the river, with the sun on my face and a gentle breeze ruffling my hair, there is nothing but wild in sight. Canyon wrens and swallows cartwheel freely through the air. Bald eagles and osprey roost in trees in between snagging fish from the river’s currents. Bighorn sheep come down to the banks for a drink. Ringtail cats and striped skunks wander through your campsite after dark.

Though not specifically protected under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Buffalo National River is protected through wording found in the Act that was inserted into the Buffalo’s enabling legislation/NPS

Rivers Outside The Act

The Yampa is a primordial Western watercourse, but despite its uniqueness and the landscape it flows through, the river has never gained Wild and Scenic River status, a political and bureaucratic snub that has dogged the river since the Wild and Scenic River Act was adopted 50 years ago.

“The social and political support of protection efforts just isn’t there on the Yampa - primarily because of concerns over future water supply and demand gaps,” explains Nathan Fey, director of American Whitewater’s Colorado River Stewardship Program. “When (the U.S. Bureau of Land Management) completed its Management Plan in 2010, three sections of the Yampa were listed as ‘suitable’ for designation. Notably, these three segments are upstream of the national monument. 

“Moffat County and the Juniper Water Conservancy District do not support the suitability determinations on the basis that future water rights and water projects could be affected. To compound the issue, (Colorado’s) position is to oppose potential federal reservations of water over concerns of limiting the state’s ability to develop its water resources. It is common for the BLM to find rivers ‘not suitable’ when pressured by state and local water interests, or to defer to the state to manage in stream flows on Suitable segments.”

The snub is not the Yampa’s alone to bear. Of the more than 3.6 million miles of streams in the country, only 12,734 miles carry any one of the three Wild and Scenic River designations of wild, scenic, or recreational rivers. That’s less than half-a-percent of all stream miles.

When he signed the Wild and Rivers Scenic Act in October 1968, President Lyndon Johnson remarked, “We have learned—all too slowly, I think—to prize and protect God's precious gifts. Because we have, our own children and grandchildren will come to know and come to love the great forests and the wild rivers that we have protected and left to them . . . An unspoiled river is a very rare thing in this Nation today. Their flow and vitality have been harnessed by dams and too often they have been turned into open sewers by communities and by industries. It makes us all very fearful that all rivers will go this way unless somebody acts now to try to balance our river development.”                                                                       

The Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho was one of the original eight rivers protected when the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was passed 50 years ago / Tim Palmer

The Politics Of Protection

West Virginia’s New River is an oddity, defying its name by being one of the continent’s oldest, and by flowing south to north when most rivers run just the opposite. It was inducted into the National Park System as a “national river” in 1988, nearly a dozen years after I started guiding rafts along its jouncing rapids. The river cuts through geology as old as the continent, and reflects and shimmers the hues of the hardwood forests that run to along its shores. It’s a geographic and biological conundrum as well.

Millions of years of available passage have allowed many species of plants and animals to move in and persist in the area. Since the New River cuts from east to west across the Appalachians, we find species that are typically Atlantic coastal plain and piedmont, such as melic grass, living with northern mountain species. Because time has favored the new River Gorge, certain unique species have been able to carve their own niches here. Several species of fish have evolved that are endemic (found nowhere else) to this river. – National Park Service

Despite this natural history, and despite the recreational tourism that has grown around running the New River’s tumultuous rapids, it, too, is not part of the nation’s Wild and Scenic Rivers system.

“I think the general answer is the same as that for the following: Why are Wilderness Study Areas or key roadless lands not protected as parks, monuments, or wilderness areas?” answers Lisa Ronald, coordinator of the Wild and Scenic anniversary, when I ask why more rivers aren’t included under, and protected by, the Act.  “Many types of lands live, sometimes perpetually, in various categories of limbo during times when our political climate is not friendly to conservation of any sort.”

Kevin Coburn, American Whitewater’s national stewardship director, takes her answer a step farther: “I'd add that designating a river often requires a sustained groundswell of local and regional support that includes county level political support, an amenable and motivated Congressional delegation representing the river's area, and national level support for conservation legislation (House, Senate, President). All of these variables are constantly shifting, and to secure designation they all have to fall into place at the same time like the tumblers in a lock.”

Tehipite Dome in Kings Canyon National Park rises above the Middle Fork of the Kings River in California/Tim Palmer

The Act In Operation

Steve Lentz has seen those tumblers align. He grew up with the Act while running rivers that were both inaugural Wild and Scenic stretches as well as those that were added many years later. His first river trip, at age 13 down the Middle Fork of the Salmon, was in 1968, just months before it was protected by President Johnson’s signature on the Act.

“The two real recent ones were the Jarbridge-Bruneau system and the Owyhee system,” says Lentz, owner of Far and Away Adventures, which runs float trips on the Middle Fork, Bruneau, and Owyhee rivers in Idaho. “Being able to use this act to bring together the interested parties that had a stakehold in these canyons, really, it was just amazing on how everyone came to the table, agreeing that these canyons were extremely special, and OK, how can we protect them?”

Cattlemen also came to the table, recalls Mr. Lentz, as did the Air Force, which used to send squadrons of fighters through, not across, the canyons.

“They were flying the corridors of those canyons on training maneuvers,” he says. “Now we might have a flyover, from the left to the right side of the walls, but they’re not following the length of the canyon where that impact is right on you.”

Along with seeing cooperation from the many stakeholders around rivers, Mr. Lentz knows how Wild and Scenic designation has benefitted rivers.

“I think it serves a heckuva purpose,” he says. “The Act has come into play in very different but very powerful and important ways to protect the watersheds. The Middle Fork was obviously the one I’ve seen since the get-go, since the Middle Fork Salmon was included in the initial eight rivers. When that took place, you immediately started seeing a different approach to the management. Of course, the low impact camping hadn’t arrived in 1968, but what immediately took place is that the grazing easements and the meadows on the headwaters of the Middle Fork were all purchased and (grazing) went away and the fishery immediately took a big rebound as a result of that.

“It was real fortunate to see the result of the protection, how important it became to try to return this river to a pristine environment. And, of course, in the ‘70s with the low-impact (camping) and fire pans and carrying everything that goes in goes out, basically, really made a difference in the health and the looks of the camps.”

The Namekagon River, a tributary of the St. Croix in St. Croix National Scenic Riverway in Wisconsin, shows its colors in spring/Tim Palmer

Wording Protection

Though just 0.35 percent of the river miles in the United States are officially protected by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, many others benefit from it, according to Don Barger, senior regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association’s Southeast Region.

The reason, he explains, is that when Congress drafted enabling legislation for many rivers that were added to the National Park System, it borrowed language from the Act. The language in question comes from Section 7A of the Act, which reads that the Federal Power Commission, “shall not license the construction of any dam, water conduit, reservoir, powerhouse, transmission line, or other project works … on or directly affecting any river which is designated … as a component of the national wild and scenic rivers system…”

While the Buffalo River in Arkansas was designated as the country’s first “national river” in 1972, it too is not specifically protected under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. However, its enabling legislation contains language very similar to that of Section 7A in the act: “The Federal Power Commission shall not license the construction of any dam, water conduit, reservoir, powerhouse, transmission line, or other project works under the Federal Power Act … on or directly affecting the Buffalo National River and no department or agency of the United States shall assist by loan, grant, license, or otherwise in the construction of any water resources project that would have a direct and adverse effect on the values for which such river is established, as determined by the Secretary…”

“The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act became a model for how streams can be protected within the context of other linear (river-based parks) in the National Park System,” explains Mr. Barger. “While they were not designated as wild and scenic rivers, Congress wanted them protected in much the same way. It was a model act whose influence goes beyond just the rivers that were designated by the act.”

Those who have come together to see a stream recognized under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and those who continue to work to achieve that goal, share a common love for a free-flowing ribbon of water that runs, leaps, and meanders downhill.

            In a country where nature has been so lavish and where we have been so spendthrift of indigenous beauty, to set aside a few rivers in their natural state should be considered an obligation. – Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, in arguing for passage of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act