The Jackson
Hole Conservation Alliance is a member of the
Campaign for the Snake Headwaters, a broad coalition
of outfitters, river users, business owners,
landowners and conservationists who have been
working for the past several years to gain protection
for the best remaining free-flowing rivers and
native trout fisheries of Wyoming's Snake River
drainage.
Thanks in part to the coalition's efforts, on May
3, 2007, Wyoming's U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas introduced
the Snake Headwaters Legacy Act, a bill to
protect about 400 miles of 13 rivers and creeks
in northwest Wyoming from threats such as water
quality degradation and dam building by including
them in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
Following Sen. Thomas' untimely death from leukemia
in June 2007, Wyoming's new Sen. John Barrasso
continued in Thomas' footsteps. On May 7, 2008,
the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
passed the Snake River bill, and in July, it
was included in the Omnibus Public Land Management
Act (S 3213) and introduced in the U.S. Senate.
Although this act wasn't passed in 2008, one
of the Senate's first actions in 2009 was to
reintroduce it (now called S 22), thus averting
a repeat of the long committee process.
Finally, on March 30, 2009, President Barack
Obama signed this Omnibus bill into law, calling
it the most important new legislation in decades “to
protect, preserve and pass down our nation’s
most treasured landscapes to future generations."
(Click
here for more information about the bill.)
Efforts continue to get Wild and Scenic Rivers
Act protection for the Greys River, another Snake
River tributary that was excluded from the above
bill because Lincoln County commissioners feared
it could jeopardize water rights.
Now, officials with the National
Park Service and Bridger-Teton National Forest
are working (and coordinating) on separate but
concurrent plans to manage the waterways covered
by the Craig Thomas Snake
River Headwaters Legacy Act. Details are available
at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/snakeriver and www.snakeheadwatersact.com.
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