Ep 16: Wild and Scenic Rivers, with Scott Bosse
Scott Bosse is the Northern Rockies Director of American Rivers, an organization that protects wild rivers, restores damaged rivers, and conserves clean water for people and nature. In this episode, Scott and I talk about Wild and Scenic Rivers, which are rivers that have been designated for protection due to their unique and outstanding qualities. We talk about what it takes for a river to make the cut, the benefits of a proactive approach to conservation, and a few examples of Wild and Scenic Rivers.
American Rivers Website: www.americanrivers.org
Montanans for Healthy Rivers Website: www.healthyriversmt.org
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Intro
You're listening to The Wild Initiative Podcast Network. Learn more and check out all the shows at thewildinitiative.com.
Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed podcast where we talk all things fishing, conservation, and the outdoors. Today on the show I'm joined by Scott Bosse, the Northern Rockies Director of American Rivers. Alright, welcome to episode number 16 of the Fish Untamed podcast. Today I am talking to Scott Bosse with American Rivers. And what we're mostly getting into today is the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Wild and Scenic Rivers are a set of rivers that have been designated for protection due to some of the qualities they possess. The way Scott describes what makes a river eligible for the Wild and Scenic designation is that it needs to be free-flowing and have one or more outstandingly remarkable values, which I thought was just such a wonderful way to describe so many of the rivers that we love to get out on and fish. What I was surprised by was that these outstandingly remarkable values don't have to be something related to just a picturesque landscape with beautiful mountains in the background and forests. Some of these rivers flow through major metropolitan areas, but because they hold values within the community and the people who live near them, they're eligible and have since been designated as wild and scenic. So even if you're already familiar with wild and scenic rivers or have maybe fished a handful, I think you'll probably learn a lot about them that you didn't know before. So without further ado, here is my chat with Scott Bosse. I just usually like to start by asking how you got your background in fishing and conservation.
Scott
Oh, I have always been in love with water and with fish. I grew up part of my life in northern New York State. And when I was a little kid, I bought a fly rod and reel at a garage sale, and I didn't know how to use it, so I put worms on the hook, but I thought it was cool to have a fly rod, and I'd ride my bike to the local stream and catch brookies. And then I also spent part of the year, every year growing up in South Florida. And my dad was a golf pro. And we'd move there every winter. And I lived on a canal that was loaded with shiners and largemouth bass and bullhead. And pretty much every day for about eight hours a day, I would fish. I'd go out on my own and, you know, try and catch alligators and shiners. and then I'd put the shiners on the hook and fish for a large amount of bass. So I've been in love with water and fishing since as long as I can remember. And then I was a fishing guide for a short period of time. I was a commercial fisherman in Alaska for four years for salmon and halibut and cod. And then I became a fishery biologist for several years before I started going to work for nonprofit river conservation groups. So yeah, fish have been the story of my life.
Katie
I wanted to ask you about some of those previous experiences, mostly just the guiding and especially the commercial fishing. Can you give a brief overview of what that entailed?
Scott
Yeah, it was really funny because when I guided, my fly fishing skills were probably the worst they've ever been because it was the first year I started fly fishing. And I was working on a guest ranch on the east side of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. and the buddy taught me how to fly fish that summer and later that fall the ranch owner said you know we could really use someone to guide our clients on the guest ranch and teach them how to catch trout in the local stream and I was like well I just kind of learned I mean I know a lot about fish and fishing but this fly fishing thing's pretty new to me and she's oh that's not a problem
Katie
so you're putting worms on their hooks like this is how I do it
Scott
[laughing] I did not put worms on the hooks, but it was like a little brushy stream where you didn't need to be able to double haul. Like you didn't need to cast very far. It was like a lot of bow and arrow casts, you know, to avoid the willows. You know, the fish were pretty willing in that stream. So that was my initiation to guiding, if you will. And then I did it the next year as well. And then commercial fishing in Alaska, I did that in my mid-20s. And I had some good friends that I met while teaching skiing in Colorado down in Winter Park. And they came from Alaska and they had families that had homesteaded there and did commercial fish their whole adult lives. And they said, come on up, I'll get you a job with my family. And, you know, I decided why not? And so I did it and had lots of great adventures. seining for salmon, long lining for cod and halibut, set gill netting for salmon on Cook Inlet, a lot of different types of fishing. But, you know, I really, unlike a lot of fly fishermen, I actually can see the world from a commercial fisher's viewpoint as well. And pretty cool to have the opportunity to fish for a family that literally homesteaded in Alaska and like took a boat up there and, you know, took a barge to the east shore of Cook Inlet and lived their first winter in a cave in the bluff and then built a house next year. You know, it was really, really cool. And I have a lot of respect for those people and what they do. And it's interesting to observe the tensions over my adult life between the guiding community and the commercial fishing community is certainly there.
Katie
I was going to ask if having that job kind of changed your view on fishing, just like recreational fishing. And you kind of covered it there, but did it change the way you felt about it or how fun you found it? Did you find yourself, you know, wanting to be around fish less because, you know, you're doing it all the time? Like how did your experiences fly fishing change based on that?
Scott
no it's funny because both commercial fishing and sport fishing are all about exploring and discovery and mystery and just wondering what lurks under the surface so i actually think there's a lot of similarities and even though like in sport fishing i'm almost entirely a catch and release angler um except with like halibut and salmon you know they taste were trying good. But, you know, I have an appreciation for fish, whether it's for sport or whether it's for food or whether it's for money. And I think they're really kind of sacred animals and I treat them with respect regardless of whether I'm commercial fishing or sport fishing.
Katie
And then after these jobs, is this when you transitioned over more into the advocacy work that you do now?
Scott
Yeah, I went back to grad school and finished my master's degree in environmental studies at the University of Montana in 1993. So that was after I commercial fished for four years and pretty much went to work as a fishery biologist for the next five or six years. And from then on out, I've been an advocate for river and fisheries conservation organizations.
Katie
And you've worked with, is it the Greater Yellowstone Coalition?
Scott
Yep.
Katie
What was the other organization?
Scott
I also worked for a statewide river conservation group in Idaho called Idaho Rivers United.
Katie
That was it, yep.
Scott
And then before that, I worked a short stint as a fisheries research biologist for the Nature Conservancy in Oregon.
Katie
Okay. And is that how you got connected with American Rivers? Or I assume that one work leads into the next.
Scott
Yeah, it's kind of interesting because working as a fishery biologist, I found really fascinating. I loved getting into the field every day and discovering new things about fish and their life histories and what water temperatures they can tolerate and how far upstreams and over waterfalls they can colonize where you never think they would be. But after a while doing that, I started wondering where my research was going. Like, what was happening to that information? Was it translating into new policies that resulted in more protections for fish and more protections for rivers? And the more I asked that question, the more I kind of found out that what was fun being a biologist, that information was not being put to good use. And my life is all, it's been about making change. And that's what really drew me into advocacy, is I wanted that information to be put to use on the ground in the form of healthier rivers and restored fish runs.
Katie
That raises another question. Is that, and you might not know the answer to this, but do you think that's something common across the board with a lot of fisheries biologists? That a lot of the time, what could be useful information just isn't being used properly? Or was that more your specific circumstance?
Scott
Yeah, I mean, I think it's difficult to survive working for a state or federal agency when there's kind of political forces above you that prevent you from being outspoken in support of your science. Like a classic example is the whole issue of Colombian snake river salmon recovery. There's an industry of biologists that work on that issue and billions of dollars have been spent on that over the last 30 years. And most biologists that really know what they're about they know what needs to be done to restore those salmon and steelhead runs but for political purposes they're literally prevented from speaking in public about that issue there have literally been periods in the state of Idaho where the governor imposed a gag order and fishery biologists working for the state of Idaho were not allowed to even talk to the public about snake river salmon recovery and dam removal.
Katie
That's crazy. And that's a pretty useful piece of information because I feel like there's a lot of people out there who would want to get into fisheries biology for that exact reason, because they're like, I, you know, I love fishing. I love fish. I want to get into a line of work where I not only get to work with, you know, what I like, but I also get to make a difference by, you know, doing these studies. And I could see that being a turnoff for someone who, who wants to become a fisheries biologist if they find out that they might not make as much of a difference as they could doing something like advocacy work?
Scott
Yeah, one of my favorite things to do every other year, I give a lecture at Montana State University here in Bozeman, where I live, and it's a graduate level class of fish and wildlife biology students. And the topic of my talk is how you can pursue a career in fisheries biology with a nonprofit organization. You don't have to go to work for a university or a state wild, a fish and wildlife agency or a federal agency. If you go to work for a nonprofit, you get to use all the tools in the toolbox to do what's necessary to protect and restore fish. And that's a really liberating thing for a lot of young students to hear. They weren't even aware of that opportunity in many cases before I told them about it.
Katie
And that's probably also pretty nice for people who don't want to do the same thing over and over again. You know, they want to have their hands all, like, in all different areas, maybe spending some time in the field, some time talking to decision makers. People with a couple different interests might be more interested in something like that, where you can kind of run the gamut of different activities versus just being strictly science all the time.
Scott
Yeah, the best biologists, the most influential biologists I know, even the ones that work for agencies and universities are the ones that are really good communicators, really good public speakers, really good writers, and they advocate for their science. They know that if they don't speak up in support of the science that they've produced, then some politician will contort the facts for them and twist it into another story. So the best, yeah, I mean, it happens all the time. And it's so frustrating to hear like governors or members of Congress try and talk about how, you know, fish can coexist with dams. We just got to give them a chance. And they really are totally either unaware of the science or they just try and bury it. And yeah, nothing's more maddening to me than to hear that.
Katie
Yeah, I'm sure it's frustrating to have your work interpreted by somebody who's not familiar with it.
Scott
Yeah, they talk about how salmon are born in the ocean and then migrate inland to spend their life in the freshwater river. Exactly. That would be an eel, yeah.
Katie
So give me the elevator pitch for American Rivers, which is where you work now, and maybe talk a little bit about your role there.
Scott
I've been with American Rivers for 10 years, and I wouldn't have stayed this long if I didn't absolutely love the organization. What I love most about American Rivers is we work on all rivers in all areas of the country, whether they support salmon and steelhead or whether they support, you know, like gar and dace and bullhead. We work in cold water rivers, warm water rivers, crystal clear rivers, murky, muddy rivers. And there's just like so many issues on different rivers in different parts of the country. And so, I mean, it's a never ending mystery and it's a puzzle. And, you know, we just get to immerse ourselves in so many different issues. If you have a curious mind, it's a wonderful organization to work for. If you love water and have a curious mind.
Katie
Awesome. And you guys have a podcast as well. I just want to throw that out before I forget. If anyone wants to listen to the American Rivers podcast that's out there and they talk a lot about, you know, the issues that they're facing right now. But are you specifically working with the wild and scenic rivers?
Scott
Well, it's interesting because the story of American Rivers founding started in 1973, actually in Denver, where you are. And a group of our volunteers actually got together and our founder put $20 on the table and said, we need to form an organization to protect the last best wild rivers, especially in the West, before they're all dammed. And like during the 1950s and 60s and early 70s, that was really the height of the dam building era in the United States. and Congress had just passed the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968. And for the first time, that gave us a tool to permanently protect wild rivers so we'd never have to fight off dams on those again. And because I run our Northern Rockies office, we live in a part of the country that's probably the wildest outside of Alaska. So there's a lot of healthy intact rivers left to protect, whereas a lot of my colleagues in other parts of the country, like the upper Midwest, the mid-Atlantic states, the Southeast, even the Northwest coast, they tend to focus on restoration more because we've dammed a lot of those rivers. We've polluted a lot of those rivers. But here in the Northern Rockies, you know, we really focus on protecting what's left.
Katie
That was, I was going to get to that later, but that's a perfect segue to, to asking, are there a lot, like when I think of wild and scenic rivers, what comes to mind is kind of what you described, you know, the Rockies, kind of the northern, central to west U.S., where there are a lot of pristine rivers. Are there any or many wild and scenic rivers throughout the rest of the country?
Scott
Yeah, there are. I mean, it's interesting that the states with the most wild and scenic rivers are, you know, Alaska, California, and Oregon, I think Idaho, and then Montana and Wyoming, something like that. So they tend to focus in the northwest quadrant of the country. But there are some states like Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. There's hundreds of miles of wild and scenic rivers. New Jersey actually has more wild and scenic rivers than Montana. The New England states just got hundreds of new wild and scenic river miles designated this past year. So there are wild and scenic rivers all over the country. I used to live when I lived in South Florida as a kid, right next to the Loxahatchee River, which is a really awesome wild and scenic river down by Jupiter, Florida, just north of West Palm Beach. And it's a place I love going back on a regular basis because the southeast coast of Florida has been just absolutely crushed with development over the decades. But when I go back to the Loxahatchee River, and if you look at it on Google Earth, It's just like this emerald green Eden that was somehow spared from all the new condos and high rises. And it really speaks to the power of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, that in a place like South Florida, where there's so much development, you can have a wild river with 500-year-old cypress trees in it and tarpon rolling on the water and largemouth bass in the upper reaches. It's a really awesome place to go.
Katie
That's awesome. I mean, imagine if every river out there just had a buffer zone like that around it. You know, how much nicer they would be.
Scott
Yeah. I mean, if you just have like a 500 foot buffer zone, it's so amazing how much wildlife exists in those narrow areas. I mean, not just the fish, but in places like Montana and Colorado, you know, about 80 percent of all the bird and mammal species here spend at least half of their life in repairing corridors.
Katie
Wow.
Scott
So you're absolutely right. If you can just set aside like a 500-foot buffer along our rivers, I mean, there's a huge positive impact to wildlife.
Katie
So what qualifications does a river need to be eligible, the right word, eligible to become a wild and scenic river? Or what qualities do the existing ones have?
Scott
Well, they generally have to have just two. They have to be free-flowing.
Katie
Okay.
Scott
So they can't be damned or impounded. And they have to have one or more outstandingly remarkable values. I didn't make up that term. Some congressmen did in the late 1960s. I don't think it's an actual word, but it exists in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. So generally speaking, our federal land management agencies, every time they redo their land management plan, which is every two or three decades, They have to do an inventory of all the rivers on that national forest or on that BLM unit, and they have to identify all the rivers that are free-flowing and have one or more outstandingly remarkable values, and those become wild and scenic eligible. And then it's up to advocacy groups like ours to take those rivers and pitch them in a bill to Congress and build public support for them.
Katie
Wow. Okay. So that, it sounds like a pretty well-defined process, even though there's, I feel like I would call the values portion a little vague, but I mean, it obviously works. What are some of the things that count as values?
Scott
It's actually really neat. And they vary by each river and each by each river reach sometimes, but the most common outstandingly remarkable values, I'll just call them ORVs from now on because it's easier, are fish, wildlife, recreation, scenery, geology, cultural values. And there's even one river, I'm trying to remember which one it is, that has a literary value.
Katie
Oh, really?
Scott
Yeah, I can't remember. I wish I could remember which river it was. But one of the cool things about the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, I mean, it's not just a conservation law, but it's also, I mean, it protects recreational values. So if fly fishing is a well-established recreational value on a river like the Gallatin in Montana, then any federally permitted project that comes along that would threaten the health of the fly fishing could be stopped or it'd have to be modified so it didn't harm fly fishing.
Katie
I like that.
Scott
That's really cool. Yeah, it's a conservation law, but it's also like a pro-recreation law.
Katie
So who decides what this value is? Like, who throws out one of these suggestions as, like, I would like to submit this as an ORV?
Scott
Well, it's interesting because the ORVs are identified after Congress passes a wild and scenic bill. So, for instance, if the Gallatin River was designated as wild and scenic, within three years of the time that bill is passing, the Custer-Gallatin National Forest would have to put together what's called a comprehensive river management plan. I'm getting really into the wonky weeds here. But in that plan, they identify all the outstandingly remarkable values that exist on that river. So the agency that manages the land through which the river flows, they put together that river management plan. And during that planning process, they identify what the values are.
Katie
So that value doesn't have to be thrown out before the bill is passed. It happens after the bill is passed.
Scott
Correct.
Katie
That's interesting. I would have guessed it's the other way around. So, and also it sounds like a river doesn't have to actually be scenic. It could be, that could be a value. But the wild and scenic, you know, it could just be a free flowing river through a, I mean, I assume a wild and scenic river probably wouldn't be going through a cattle pasture, but it doesn't need to have a calendar worthy background.
Scott
Yeah, it's like, I mean, the Wilderness Act is different because for lands to qualify as wilderness, they have to be totally unroaded and of wilderness quality. But for a river to be wild and scenic, it just needs to be free flowing and have one or more outstandingly remarkable values. There's one river that got designated as wild and scenic in 2009 in eastern Massachusetts called the Taunton River. And that actually flows through an industrial city.
Katie
Really?
Scott
And the reason why it was designated wild and scenic is because the local congressman that led that effort at the time, I think it was Barney Frank, wanted to prevent an LNG plant, a liquid natural gas plant, from being built on the banks of the river. And under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cannot authorize any projects in the river corridor. So that effectively stopped that natural gas plant from being built on the riverbank.
Katie
That's crazy. I mean, I just assumed, like when you said that, you know, scenery can be a value, I assumed that for the most part, most of these rivers are very scenic anyway. Just, you know, by the nature of being free-flowing and having some sort of value, that most of them are going to be not some, you know, gross river flowing through the middle of a city. But it sounds like there can be a lot of values that don't actually have anything to do with how it looks.
Scott
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, having unique fish species or endangered fish species or even just native cutthroat trout in the northern Rocky Mountains oftentimes is enough to qualify rivers as wild and scenic eligible. But yeah, there's a whole range of values that can factor into the equation. I think that's one of the really cool things about the law.
Katie
Yeah, that is really neat. um what was i going to ask you oh yes do uh does the river have to have never been dammed or could it have could there be removed dams and now it qualifies no that's that's a great
Scott
question so like a perfect example is the Elwha river on an olympic national park in western Washington state so um as you probably know the two dams on the Elwha river were removed between 2011 and 2013. And now the entire Elwha River is being proposed for wild and scenic designation as part of the Wild Olympics bill that Washington's congressional delegation is carrying.
Katie
That's awesome.
Scott
Yeah, that happened, I believe it happened on Fossil Creek in Wyoming. There was a dam, excuse me, in Arizona. And there was a dam removed and Fossil Creek was subsequently designated as a wild and scenic river in 2009. Oh, that's awesome. I know you wanted to mention,
Katie
so I had a couple things listed that you wanted to talk about, and this might be a good time, but I know one of the things you wanted to mention was the importance of removing dams for like a proactive protection, because I know the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is kind of a proactive, I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, but a proactive solution, I guess, to the problem instead of trying to bring rivers back. And dam removal would obviously be bringing rivers back from a more negatively impacted situation. But do you want to talk a little bit about dam removal and the benefits that that has?
Scott
Yeah, I mean, I want to give you a good example that contrasts the strategy of wild and scenic designation with dam removal. So in Montana, right now we're working to get a bill introduced to protect over 600 miles of new wild and scenic rivers in the western part of the state. Generally speaking, when we study our campaigns retroactively, we find that it costs about $2,000 a river mile to get a river designated as wild and tunic. Like we'll factor in the total cost of the campaign and staff time and paid advertising over a period of 10 years, and it's about $2,000 a river mile. So the Clark Fork River, the Clark Fork of the Columbia, starts near Butte, Montana, and it flows past Missoula and eventually makes its way into Lake Pend Oreille. It's the largest Superfund site in the United States. For 120 miles, that river has been polluted by toxic heavy metals from mining up near Butte and Anaconda. Those toxic heavy metals actually accumulated behind a dam just upriver from Missoula. That dam is called Milltown Dam. And because the dam was over 100 years old, there was this fear that the dam was going to burst at some point and all those toxic heavy metals were going to get into the aquifer of Missoula's drinking water supply. So Milltown Dam was actually removed. And over the last 10 years or so, the federal government has dredged up a lot of the toxic heavy metals all along the Clark Fork River. and that's costing about $8 million a river mile to restore that river to a semblance of its former glory. So contrast that, protecting a wild river for $2,000 a river mile versus restoring a badly degraded river from mining for $8 million a river mile. And that shows the power and the wisdom of being proactive. Now, that being said, I mean, we have lots of rivers that have been dammed for many, many years and in many cases over a century. And we have some amazing opportunities to restore some of the, you know, the world's greatest salmon runs on the West Coast through dam removals, like the Elwha Dam removals on the Olympic Peninsula. Starting next year, four dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California are going to be removed. And that's going to be the largest river restoration project in the history of the world, which is really exciting. California colleagues have been working on that for decades. And then kind of the granddaddy of them all is the idea of removing four dams on the lower Snake River in eastern Washington, which would literally open up 5,500 miles of some of the best salmon and steelhead spawning habitat on the face of the earth, mainly in central Idaho, in the Salmon River drainage and Middle Fork
Katie
Salmon drainage, Clearwater and Selway. So are these places that salmon historically were able to make it up to and are no longer able to make it to at all?
Scott
In the case of Elwha dams, they completely block salmon runs. There's no fish passage. In the case of the lower snake dams, they actually do have fish ladders for adults moving upriver and they have bypass systems and all sorts of gizmos for helping juvenile salmon get downstream. But despite 30 years of effort and spending, you know, probably close to $20 billion, that has not worked. I mean, those fish are slipping towards extinction. And, you know, the Snake River Chinook salmon were the greatest Chinook salmon runs on earth. I mean, more than half of all the Chinook salmon in the entire Columbia Basin came back to central Idaho and southeast Washington and northeast Oregon to spawn. Likewise, the steelhead that used to run up the north fork of the Clearwater River, They were totally extinguished when Dwarf Shack Dam was built there near Orofino, Idaho in 1975. So some of those dams we're trying to remove have blocked fish runs for decades. Others have partially blocked fish runs. And in the case of the lower snake dams, again, they've partially blocked fish runs, but really driven those stocks towards extinction over the last several decades.
Katie
That was going to be my next question. What happens to these salmon populations when they can't get back up to spawn? Is it just that way fewer spawns, so there are way fewer born and the population just goes down? Or are there salmon that just stop returning and they just, you know, there's just a big population that can never come back up the river but still lives out somewhere else?
Scott
Yeah. What we've historically done when we've destroyed salmon runs is we've replaced the healthy river with a hatchery. And we've had a lot of hubris and thought that we can synthesize new salmon at hatcheries and just release them into the river. And those are our new salmon runs. They don't need a wild river to survive. Well, not only is that super expensive, but, I mean, hatchery fish actually compete with wild fish and are one of the contributing factors that drive wild fish into extinction. One of the challenges, when we let salmon runs get to the point where only single digit number of fish are coming back, like in the early 90s, only four sockeye salmon came back to Redfish Lake, Idaho, when those Snake River sockeye were listed under the Endangered Species Act. When you lose almost all of your genetic material and those fish disappear, you can't just take a hatchery salmon from the Fraser River in British Columbia and stock it in Redfish Lake, Idaho, and expect it to migrate 800 miles out to the ocean and come back. know what to do that was a unique stock of fish and once they're gone they're gone so the critical thing is um for for dam removal projects in particular it really helps with their success if there's some sufficient genetic material left so once you take that dam out those fish can naturally recolonize the system if you have to start a run from scratch it makes it a lot more difficult.
Katie
Oh yeah I mean those fish have been evolving in that environment for how long and I to to take them out and just replace them with something that just got there yesterday I feel like it's you can't even compare the two.
Scott
You can't compare the two I mean they're totally different species literally.
Katie
Yeah well can can a wild and scenic river just is it the whole river or can it be a certain section of river and if it's just as if certain sections are could the river have dams in other areas but have part of it be wild and scenic?
Scott
Totally. We have that in many cases. So you can just designate a stretch of river, and that river can have a dam upstream or downstream of the free-flowing reach, and that's okay. You just can't build a dam and impound the water within the wild and scenic reach. So good examples of where we have that, the Snake River through Hell's Canyon on the border of Idaho and Oregon has three major dams on it. The Snake River in Jackson Hole, Wyoming has Jackson Lake Dam just north of a town about 20 miles. So there's a lot of examples where we have wild and scenic rivers with dams, you know, just upstream or just downstream with the wild and scenic reach.
Katie
Do you ever have rivers that, apart from dam removal itself, that don't qualify until they get some sort of restoration work done to them? Or are dams kind of the limiting factor on a lot of these designations?
Scott
I think there are other limiting factors, too. You know, sometimes what a river needs to have a restored fishery is, you know, restored riparian vegetation or restored flows. Okay. You know, sometimes in the West, we have a big, big problem that's being exacerbated by climate change of over-appropriated rivers where there's literally no water left in rivers in drought years. And if you can get some in-stream flows back for fish and restore a healthy fishery that way, that may make that river qualify for wild and scenic designation based on its fishery value, whereas that didn't exist before the restoration project happened.
Katie
Okay. That's interesting. What happens to private landowners along a stretch that gets designated?
Scott
Well, they get the best insurance policy that money can buy to ensure that the river is going to stay that way forever. And I say that half-jokingly, but it's totally true. Wild and Tink designation is definitely good for private property values because it ensures that, like I said, that river that you love is going to stay that way. The law itself does not affect private property, right? So it doesn't affect your ability to subdivide your riverfront land or build a cabin. It doesn't dictate what color you can paint your house or anything like that. So it's one of the great compromises that was made when the Wild and Snake Rivers Act passed in 1968, is it really doesn't affect private property rights.
Katie
Have you had any private property owners think negatively of it, even though from the outside looking in it seems like a positive?
Scott
you know um when rivers are proposed for wild and scenic designation we always get a couple people who you know they hear a rumor you know they heard at the local bar that you know once this creek gets designated as wild and scenic the federal government's going to come in with their helicopters and haul your house away they're going to like condemn all the private land and turn it into a national park but um it really doesn't take that much research to find out that we've had you know, over 210 wild and scenic rivers in America, many for many decades, and that's not happened. And pretty much every private landowner that I have spoken with and that researchers that study this subject have spoken with, they find that the experience living on a wild and scenic river has been super, super positive. If there's one thing I hear from private landowners, it's when this oil and gas filling that happens on a river or a dam is proposed on a river or some other form of development and they say I wish we had gotten this river designated as wild and scenic before this threat came along.
Katie
That's impressive. I feel like there's a lot of issues that for people who value rivers or fish or anything like that, you know, it appears good to us. But if, you know, if you tried to impose anything on a private landowner, I think there's a tendency to be defensive. And it's impressive that you have very little pushback for something that I would expect you to have more pushback on, I guess, just from the view of a private landowner who thinks, like, I've lived here for ages and I don't want anything to change.
Scott
Yeah, we've talked to a lot of our private property owners that own ranches or cabins or farms on the upper Missouri River in Montana and the forks of the upper Flathead. And I mean, they have nothing but great things to say about the Wild and Tink Rivers Act because they absolutely love those rivers. I mean, they fish on them, they hunt on them, they paddle on them, and nothing would break their hearts more than to see the rivers they love be degraded. And the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is the law that keeps them the way they are.
Katie
If a river is designated as wild and scenic, what does that mean going forward in terms of things like development or drilling? What specific protections are in place at that point once something is wild and scenic?
Scott
Yeah, well, I don't want to get too far into the weeds because there's different classifications of wild and scenic rivers. Like there's wild, scenic, and recreational, and those are determined based on the level of development that exists along that river at the time of designation. So wild rivers are rivers that are like in wilderness areas or roadless areas. Scenic rivers have some road access but are semi-wild. And then recreational rivers can exist right along the highway.
Katie
Okay.
Scott
So, like an example of the Snake River Canyon, south of Jackson's, right along the highway. We have a lot of rivers like that in the system. Along wild rivers, new mineral entries are automatically withdrawn. So, there's no new mining or oil and gas drilling. Basically, any major extractive activity that is proposed, either along a wild and scenic river or upstream of one, that could degrade water quality or any of those outstandingly remarkable values is impacted by the wild and scenic designation. So the reach of the act is actually beyond the narrow half mile long corridor along the river. So here's a great example on the Hoback River in Wyoming, which is a tributary of the snake. We got it designated as wild and scenic in 2009. And then a few years later, a Texas based energy company wanted to drill 136 gas wells at the waters where it was not designated as wild and scenic because it was in a different county and and the politics in that county were really conservative and they didn't want the wild and scenic designation. Anyway we helped stop that gas drilling proposal because we showed the energy company that if they conducted those activities there's no way they could do it without degrading the water quality downstream in the wild and scenic reach and that really brought them to the negotiating table and working with some great conservation partners. We all worked together on an oil and gas lease buyout and raised almost $10 million to buy out those drilling rights. And now that area has been congressionally withdrawn from all new energy development.
Katie
That's awesome. So it's kind of like a watershed wide protection just by default.
Scott
Yeah, it's a little bit different, but like with wilderness, there are no buffer zones. If an area is designated as a wilderness area, you can't necessarily stop a coal-fired power plant from polluting 200 miles away and having the haze drift over the wilderness area. But with the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the power of that law can extend all throughout the watershed. So any federally permitted activity that would degrade water quality or the special values of that river could be impacted by the designation. And I mean that in a good way.
Katie
It sounds to me like you should go to the mouth of every river and just protect the last mile of it, just so nothing upstream of it can be attacked.
Scott
Yeah, or if you actually put that, like, you know, if one of the values of a designated river in central Idaho, like the Salmon River, is an anadromous fish runs, and then a dam is proposed way downstream, that would block those fish from getting, you know, further up into the wild. That's another example of how wild and scenic could come into play.
Katie
That's really cool. So it could be a downstream issue, too, just as long as something's traveling upstream, it would still count. Exactly. That's pretty cool. Yeah, that's really neat. Have you noticed, so I assume that there's, maybe this assumption is wrong. If there have been concerns from people about, you know, an economic impact of a wild and scenic designation. So let's say someone wants to argue that, you know, an economic problem will happen because of, you know, less extraction or something like that. Is there any evidence for a boost in economic activity around, you know, people coming to, you know, maybe in a recreational river, people coming to use that river or in a wild river, people coming to fly fish that river? Is there any sort of data behind that?
Scott
You know, it's interesting. It's a double edged sword because some communities, when they want to get a wild and sink river designated in their backyard, they want to attract more tourists. want to attract more paddlers and you know it's good for the business community the chamber of commerce gets behind it it's easy to get elected officials behind it because it's good for business and then you have other areas where people just love the stream the way it is and they really don't want any more people coming to it and we tell those communities like hey listen it it's whatever you want if you want to just protect this river and keep it the way it is then don't take out a multi-million dollar advertising campaign telling people all over the world to come to your river. But if you do want that, then wild and scenic is a really good, it's really good marketing value. And after we got 400 river miles around Jackson Hall, Wyoming designated, the local chamber of commerce actually ran full page newspaper ads all over the Rockies, counting the fact that Teton County, Wyoming had more wild and scenic rivers than any county in America.
Katie
I wonder if it correlates to, you know, if you're a tourist town, anything to get more tourists. And if you're not a tourist town, then you can just lay low and pretend it's not happening.
Scott
Yeah, and we do hear from a lot of people, especially in small communities. They're like, you know, we just want to keep our stream the way it is. We don't want more people. And if you can help us get it designated wild and scenic, so the river's not dammed or so it's not polluted by oil and gas drilling, then that'd be great. But we don't want to market this.
Katie
Do you happen to know if it increases property values along the river? Because I know if I were looking at a property, I'd definitely be willing to pay a little bit more if I saw that it bordered a wild and scenic river.
Scott
Yeah. I'm not aware of any published studies that show that. I mean, there's a lot of anecdotal information showing that the private property on wild and scenic rivers probably increases in value greater than than riverfront property on a river that's not protected um but you can't really prove that through peer-reviewed research at least i'm not aware of it yet
Katie
fair enough and i'm sure that that also just goes case by case you know if someone's willing to pay for it then then that person selling might get a boost um whereas someone else might just just want the house and not care too much but I mean I know like you said if if they choose to use it as advertising they might get more tourists and I I know that if I were you know planning a trip to Montana and I was just looking for a place to fish if I saw two rivers side by side on a page and one was listed as wild and scenic and one wasn't I know which one I'm going to and that's kind of how I feel about if you know two two houses are are all else equal I would definitely choose the one that I know I'm not going to have to worry about my river getting ruined down the down the road.
Scott
Yeah you know the interesting thing is one of the major reasons why rivers don't get protected as well I'm saying is because people are so afraid that if it's protected it'll attract more people that they'd rather not take that risk but the the fact of the matter is I mean for in Montana for instance two of the most popular rivers as far as angler days are the Madison River and the Yellowstone River. And I'll add the Smith River is definitely one of the most sought after fishing experiences in Montana. None of those rivers are designated as wild and scenic. So, I mean, wild and scenic does not result in crowding. What results in crowding is the fact that people have seen pictures of a river. They've read stories in fishing magazines about the river. And it's got a really healthy fishery and you can catch lots of fish and there's pretty scenery and that's why they go. people generally don't go to wild and scenic rivers like they go to national parks. There's their lower profile designation.
Katie
Yeah, and I'm thinking about it. I mean, what are some of the most popular fishing waters out there? Tail waters, which are, you know, obviously dammed.
Scott
So, yeah, I mean, I'm thinking of the places in Colorado.
Katie
I was surprised, and I don't know if this has changed because I haven't looked in the past year or so probably, but last time I looked, there was only one wild and scenic river in Colorado, And it was the Cache la Poudre up probably just west of Fort Collins. Yeah. And thinking about all the rivers I fished, that doesn't even come close to the busiest one.
Scott
Totally.
Katie
And all the busiest ones are tailwaters.
Scott
Yeah. Yeah. The Blue River, Gunnison. I mean, yeah. Any number you could pick.
Katie
So one more thing I know you wanted to cover before we wrap up is the effects that climate change has had on all this.
Scott
Yeah, you know, a lot of anglers in particular are super aware of what climate change is doing to our rivers as far as we're getting the snowpacks melting off earlier. We're hitting our base flows earlier in the summer. Water temperatures are going up. Algae blooms are proliferating. On rivers like the Yellowstone, we're actually starting to see smallmouth bass move further and further upstream all the way up to Livingston, where, you know, 20 years ago, there were never any smallmouth bass up that far. So those are the common impacts of climate change that most anglers see on the ground if they're actually on the water all the time. But what most people don't think about is with climate change, it's really increased the demand for new water storage projects, which means new dams. It's increased the demand for new carbon-free energy sources, which can be hydropower. So there's a lot of indirect effects of climate change that pose really, really huge threats to some of our most valued rivers, especially in the West.
Katie
I'd never thought of that before. You know, I think about the effects of climate change in terms of just a, you know, one-to-one cause relationship where, you know, the climate changes and the water is affected in this way or the fish are affected in this way. But it didn't occur to me that something like water storage, you know, that's a huge thing on a river. You know, if you need to dam a river, that's going to completely change the course of the river. So even if those fish weren't directly affected by changing weather, they could be affected even more so, arguably, by humans' reaction to a changing climate.
Scott
Yeah, one of the things that American Rivers does, I think, this is super cool, our California office, they do a lot of subalpine meadow restoration on the foothills of this year in Nevada. So like literally a century ago, there was a ton of sheep grazing. John Muir wrote a lot about it in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. And because of that historic overgrazing, you have a lot of ravines and eroded areas. So when the snow melts off, it just cascades straight down to lower elevations and you lose that snowpack. By restoring these meadows and like plugging these deeply incised ravines and replanting wetlands vegetation, you can actually store water in there like a sponge. And we're quantifying how much water you can store in these restored meadows. And we're convincing communities, instead of building new dams on rivers, if you just restore these meadows, you can store that water in a really natural way that benefits the environment and you get the water that you need in the future.
Katie
That's really cool. So does it turn essentially into a wetland or would it still be, if you're walking through it, would it still be like a meadow?
Scott
It's kind of a mix of both. A lot of those meadows do have wetlands in them, but they literally act as a natural sponge, a natural reservoir. So when that snow melts off, it percolates down into the soil and then slowly kind of moves downstream through the system before it reaches the ocean, instead of cascading off through these eroded ravines and making it to the ocean a lot quicker.
Katie
So it sounds like the added benefits in addition to just the water storage, I assume there's just fewer eroded areas, you know, like areas that can become healthier with more plants. Does it also filter the water and make it a little cleaner?
Scott
It does, absolutely. Yeah.
Katie
So a nice side effect.
Scott
Yeah, that's an example of like a green infrastructure or natural infrastructure. And that's one of the things that makes American rivers pretty unique is not only do we protect wild rivers and restore degraded rivers, but we work in urban areas to build new green infrastructure to reduce stormwater runoff, which reduces water pollution that makes its way into our rivers and degrades fisheries. So we work in cities like Toledo and Atlanta and Milwaukee and Washington, D.C. to build rain gardens and bioswales and all this cool green infrastructure that at first glance, you'd say, what does that have to do with rivers? And it all has to do with slowing down runoff and filtering runoff so pollutants don't make their way into our mainstown rivers.
Katie
Well, I'm sure a lot of people can get behind that, even if they don't care about the effects that, you know, cleaner water, things like that. Just, I think most people would agree that having, you know, more intact habitats with lots of plants and animals is going to be a lot nicer to be around than a dam.
Scott
That, and like, you know, it's much cheaper to preserve a wetland or to restore a wetland to filter pollutants out of our water than it is to build like a water treatment plant. So using natural infrastructure, it saves communities like billions of dollars a year. And it's beneficial to the environment.
Katie
And less prone to accidents and breaking.
Scott
This is very true.
Katie
All right, Scott. Well, this is a great chat. I learned so much about the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and the rivers themselves that I feel like that fact about the salmon migrating upstream, that may have been my favorite thing I learned today. do you want to share where people can find either you or American Rivers or any other places you want to send people
Scott
sure I mean American Rivers obviously we have a website AmericanRivers.org we've got a really active Facebook page we actually have lots of short films on our website which is really cool films between 2 minutes and 15 minutes long I think we've got 15 to 20 of them on our website now It's a great way to learn about our work in a really creative, entertaining way. So I really encourage people to check out the short films on our website. And, you know, we've got offices all around the country. I'm based in Bozeman, Montana, right in downtown Bozeman on Main Street. And anyone can go to our website and find out where our offices are. And we love meeting with our members and supporters and hearing their concerns and teaching them more about our work.
Katie
Awesome. Well, I hope people check out American Rivers and maybe make some time to go visit one of these wild and scenic rivers that you guys have been working on.
Scott
It's my favorite thing to do.
Katie
All right. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Scott, and I hope you have a great rest of your evening.
Scott
Thanks, and have a great Thanksgiving.
Katie
All right. You too. All right, and that'll do it. As always, if you liked what you heard, go ahead and go over to the Wild Initiative podcast. You can subscribe there and get my shows bi-weekly on Thursdays, as well as all of Sam's other shows throughout the week. You can also find all my episodes on fishuntamed.com in addition to backcountry fly fishing articles. You can find me on social media under my name, Katie Burgert, on Go Wild or at fishuntamed on Instagram. And I will see you all back here in two weeks. All right. Bye, everybody.
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