Keep Western Maryland’s scenic river wild | READER COMMENTARY

For years, my license plate learn “YOUGH.”

This was in honor of the exceptional Youghiogheny River — a wild experience that examined me, my husband and our pals in our youthful days, initially on raft and “rubber duck” then in kayak and canoe, many times for years. Due to Dan Rodrick’s current column (”Dan Rodricks: Go away the Youghiogheny, Maryland’s formally ‘wild’ river, alone,” Might 24), these difficult glowing recollections pulled up a giant grin.

The river’s Maryland part — in Garrett County, and known as the Higher Yough — is its hardest and remotest. Steep, boulder-strewn and sinuous, the river hall features a 280 foot drop of whitewater over 4 miles. In 1968, the federal authorities declared the Maryland part (the river additionally runs by West Virginia and Pennsylvania) to be one of many nation’s 5 remaining “wild and scenic rivers.” The Maryland legislature adopted this designation, and undertook intensive examine of the hall’s assets, ecology and endangered species, finally codifying protections to preserve its “primitive qualities and traits.” Fifty years in the past, our portion of the Youghiogheny was celebrated in a Nationwide Geographic quantity known as “America’s Wild and Scenic Rivers” and it has been famous ever since in related books.

Our state’s stretch of this gorgeous waterway stays a nationwide ecological treasure. It should profit it in no way to be domesticated by a parallel tourist-driven hike and bike path. The Maryland Division of Pure Sources has carefully sought to guard the Yough’s wild “excellent exceptional values.” We thank DNR for that and hope it doesn’t let up now.

— Sarah Lord, Baltimore

The author is a former president of the Baltimore Metropolis Forest Conservancy District Board.

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