Wild And Scenic Rivers Of The United States
National Wild and Scenic River is a designation for certain protected areas in the United States.
The National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was an outgrowth of the recommendations of a Presidential commission, the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC). Among other things, the commission recommended that the nation protect wild rivers and scenic rivers from development that would substantially change their wild or scenic nature. The act was sponsored by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 2, 1968. A river or river section may be designated by the U.S. Congress or the Secretary of the Interior. As of 2004, a total of 156 rivers have wild and scenic status.
Selected rivers in the United States are preserved for possessing outstandingly remarkable scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, cultural, or other similar values. Rivers, or sections of rivers, so designated are preserved in their free-flowing condition and are not dammed or otherwise impeded. National wild and scenic designation essentially vetoes the licensing of new hydropower projects on or directly affecting the river. It also provides very strong protection against bank and channel alterations that adversely affect river values, protects riverfront public lands from oil, gas and mineral development, and creates a federal reserved water right to protect flow-dependent values.
Designation as a wild and scenic river is not the same as a national park designation, and generally does not confer the same level of protection as a Wilderness Area designation. However, wild and scenic designation protects rivers and related resources even in non-federal areas, something the Wilderness Act and other federal designations cannot do.
Federally-administered National Wild and Scenic rivers are managed by one or more of the four principal land-managing agencies of the federal government. Of the 156 National Wild and Scenic Rivers, the most are managed by the U.S. Forest Service, followed by the National Park Service. Thirty-eight are managed under the Bureau of Land Management's National Landscape Conservation System while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages several rivers in Alaska.
State-managed wild and scenic rivers are subject to the same protections as federally-administered rivers. These state rivers are added to the National System by the Secretary of the Interior following an application by the governor of the state the river flows through.
Wild and scenic rivers are assigned one or more classifications: wild, scenic, or recreational. These classifications are based on the developmental character of the river on the date of designation. Wild rivers are the most remote and undeveloped while recreational rivers often have many access points, roads, railroads, and bridges. A river's classification is not related to the value(s) that made it worthy of designation and that must be protected and enhanced by the river manager. For instance, recreation may not be an outstanding value on a river with a recreational classification nor scenery on a river classified as scenic. Notably, wild and scenic rivers receive the same standard of protection regardless of classification.
Read more about Wild And Scenic Rivers Of The United States: See Also
Famous quotes containing the words wild and, united states, wild, scenic, rivers, united and/or states:
“There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knolwedge, Grammatica parda, tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgement shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.”
—Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855)
“Hence from scenic bacchanal,
Preshrunk and droll prodigal!
Smallness that you had to spend,
Spent. Wench, whiskey and tail-end
Of your overseas disease
Rot and rout you by degrees.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Like an unseasonable stormy day,
Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,
As if the world were all dissolved to tears,
So high above his limits swells the rage
Of Bolingbroke.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Prior to the meeting, there was a prayer. In general, in the United States there was always praying.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“... there is a place in the United States for the Negro. They are real American citizens, and at home. They have fought and bled and died, like men, to make this country what it is. And if they have got to suffer and die, and be lynched, and tortured, and burned at the stake, I say they are at home.”
—Amanda Berry Smith (1837–1915)