For the week of November 19 - 24, 2003

Palmer lights up crowd with photos and lecture

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"Turn to your own river and adopt it as yours. If you don’t take care of these places, nobody will."

— TIM PALMER, Author and rivers advocate

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

Tim Palmer has spent much of his life floating the rivers of the United States. The country’s aquatic corridors are his respite, his passion and his job.

"There is certainly power and magic and beauty on the rivers of this country," he said during a slide-show presentation highlighting the best and worst of river conservation in the United States.

Palmer, 55, was the featured speaker at a day-long conference on Saturday, Nov. 15, that was designed to highlight The Nature Conservancy’s Silver Creek Preserve in southern Blaine County.

Palmer, an author who focuses primarily on rivers, has written 15 books, many of which focus on western rivers and western river conservation issues.

"The rivers are the highlight of our landscape," he said, clicking through slides of serene, serpentine rivers and then raging, muddy cascades.

Palmer touched, notably, on the big dams built throughout the country through the 1970s. With completion of the dams, flooding is less prevalent, and cottonwood trees, which require flood-scoured riverbanks on which to deposit their seeds, are aging and dying.

"Nothing is there to take their place," he said. "Floods are another part of the life of the river. Floods are utterly essential to the life of the river."

Pollution is another big problem facing the country’s rivers, he said.

With passage of the Clean Water Act, the "epidemic of toxic waste" has been curbed, he said. But agricultural waste and runoff from mines and clear cuts continue to plague rivers.

The "biggest problem of all" is the proliferation of non-native, exotic species, he said.

"Only 2 percent of our rivers are in their best, outstanding condition. We have all got to become more politically involved. We have got to get rid of the people who are running things now.

"Turn to your own river and adopt it as yours. If you don’t take care of these places, nobody will."

 

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