Keep Western Maryland’s scenic river wild

For years, my license plate read “YOUGH.”

This was in honor of the remarkable Youghiogheny River — a wild ride that tested me, my husband and our friends in our younger days, initially on raft and “rubber duck” then in kayak and canoe, again and again for years. Thanks to Dan Rodrick’s recent column (“Dan Rodricks: Leave the Youghiogheny, Maryland’s officially ‘wild’ river, alone,” May 24), those challenging sparkling memories pulled up a big grin.

The river’s Maryland section — in Garrett County, and called the Upper Yough — is its toughest and remotest. Steep, boulder-strewn and sinuous, the river corridor includes a 280 foot drop of whitewater over four miles. In 1968, the federal government declared the Maryland section (the river also runs through West Virginia and Pennsylvania) to be one of the nation’s five remaining “wild and scenic rivers.” The Maryland legislature adopted this designation, and undertook intensive study of the corridor’s resources, ecology and endangered species, ultimately codifying protections to conserve its “primitive qualities and characteristics.” Fifty years ago, our portion of the Youghiogheny was celebrated in a National Geographic volume called “America’s Wild and Scenic Rivers” and it has been noted ever since in similar books.

Our state’s stretch of this stunning waterway remains a national ecological treasure. It will benefit it not at all to be domesticated by a parallel tourist-driven hike and bike path. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources has conscientiously sought to protect the Yough’s wild “outstanding remarkable values.” We thank DNR for that and hope it doesn’t let up now.

The writer is a former president of the Baltimore City Forest Conservancy District Board.