Masters Thesis

The impacts of the state and federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Acts in conservation efforts on California's Trinity River

River conservationists often proclaim the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and its state counterpart, the California Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, to be the most effective river-specific pieces of conservation legislation in the United States. The Trinity River, situated in northern California, was designated as “wild and scenic” under the state act in 1972 and the federal act in 1981. This study recounts the narrative of the Trinity River’s relationship with the state and federal Wild and Scenic Rivers acts with the goal of evaluating the impacts of both laws on the river and its struggling salmon and steelhead populations. While its inclusion in the state and federal wild rivers systems was symbolically important as the codification of intensifying public and institutional concern for the health and aesthetics of river ecosystems, this study finds that the acts had only modest practical impacts on conservation efforts along the Trinity River. Although the laws provided the river with its only formal protections from additional dams and reservoirs, a myriad of other factors suggest that it was highly unlikely that the numerous proposed water impoundment facilities would have been built, regardless of the Trinity’s wild and scenic designations. Because of public and institutional concern for the river’s anadromous fishery, most managing agencies were already taking precautions to prevent harming the river’s ability to support natural fish populations. Most importantly, neither acts contained the language to require the restriction of water diversions by the Trinity River Division of the Central Valley Project.

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