Last summer, my wife, Katie Gibson, and
I travelled the length of the Yellowstone River, 678 miles from its
source on Yount’s Peak in Wyoming’s Teton Wilderness,
to its confluence with the Missouri River, just inside North
Dakota.
We walked through the wild headwaters country and
Yellowstone Park, then paddled over 500 miles from the park
boundary across eastern Montana. We ran into grizzlies and
wildfires, watched soaring eagles and pelicans, listened to the
slap of beavertails and the croaky staccato of sandhill cranes, and
sat through soul-stirring sunsets.
Throughout the 31-day
trip, Kate and I marvelled at what a special gift the Yellowstone
River is, not only to those of us in south-central and eastern
Montana, but also to all Americans. For here in our backyard,
unbelievably, runs a river almost wild and almost free. Not
undammed, because there are six irrigation weirs that cross the
entire river, but flowing without interruption. This is a river
still largely connected to its floodplain, with naturally braiding
channels and uncontrolled spring runoffs that reshape the riverbed.
Just think of it: Elsewhere in our country wild salmon
can’t survive the replumbed waterworks of the Pacific
Northwest. Millions are being spent to rip down or study the
ripping down of ill-conceived dams. Hundreds of millions are being
spent to restore the Napa River and reconnect it with its
floodplain. Fish fight for their lives to survive the toxic
cesspools of our polluted mining fiascos, Montana’s upper
Clark Fork River being a prime example. Everywhere in the West we
are dewatering our streams until they look like gravel roadbeds
each summer.
In the midst of these attempts to
control and manipulate nature, the Yellowston River runs on. It is
a river that for much of its length William Clark might still
recognize as the waterway he travelled eastward near the conclusion
of his expedition with Lewis, in 1806.
That’s not
to say that the Yellowstone doesn’t have its share of
ecological challenges. Lake trout are displacing native cutthroat
trout in Yellowstone Lake and threatening to destroy the
food-source foundation of an entire ecosystem. Whirling disease has
been found both inside and outside the park, further threatening
fisheries. Septic spills from under-funded tourist facilities
threaten the park’s surface and subsurface waters, and by
extension its major waterway, the Yellowstone River. Just outside
of the park’s boundary, near Gardiner, a gold mine has been
proposed for an island in the middle of the river.
In
Montana’s Paradise Valley, the pressure to build homes in the
floodplain is relentless. Developers and landowners prosper;
natural riverine processes suffer. Riprap throughout the
river’s length protects private property but sterilizes the
river. With the river disconnected from its floodplain, habitat is
lost to fish and wildlife. Island formation and erosion and the
great natural interplay of cottonwoods and beavers are disrupted.
And when the energy of spring floods cannot dissipate naturally,
they instead wreak havoc in non-armoured areas.
From
Paradise Valley to Sydney, the river serves as our source of
industrial cooling and process water. It supplies our drinking
water and accepts our municipal, industrial, and agricultural
wastes. We draw life-giving agricultural irrigation waters
throughout the length of the Yellowstone below Gardiner, regularly
dropping water levels so low that cries for dams ring out even
today. For example, operators of the Corette Power Plant proposed
damming the river at Billings as recently as June 2001.
Even within the context of these challenges, the Yellowstone River
remains the longest free-flowing river in the Lower 48, providing a
continuous linkage between Wyoming’s rugged Teton Wilderness,
Yellowstone Park, Livingston’s Paradise Valley, the rimrock country
around my original home town of Billings, and the agricultural
lands of eastern Montana.
Yes, there are challenges, but
those challenges are not yet the controlling factors of the river:
We still have the opportunity to do something right with the
Yellowstone. Limits to floodplain development and riprapping,
maintenance of in–stream flows, protection of water quality
from ill-planned mining, agricultural, or industrial practices, and
more can help retain the natural character of the river.
We have opportunities still for protecting the Yellowstone River,
but even more we have responsibilities to the generations yet to
come. I want them to have a chance to know this magnificent river
as Kate and I have come to know it, as it flows wild and free
beneath the Big Sky.
Scott Bischke is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado (hcn.org). He is a chemical and environmental engineer in
Bozeman, Montana, as well as a freelance
writer.
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