Columbia River and Snake tributary

Columbia River and Snake tributary
– North AmeriCa

The Columbia River is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises at Columbia Lake (820 m a.s.l.), in the Southern Rocky Mountain Trench in British Columbia, Canada, and travels some 2,000 km through British Columbia and Washington State, United States, then turns West to form the border between the states of Washington and Oregon, before joining the Pacific Ocean. It drains a catchment area of about 670,000 km2, larger than the size of France. We mainly focused on its largest tributary, the Snake River, whose 278,000-km2 catchment drains parts of six U.S. states. The river rises at 2,800 m a.s.l in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, in Yellowstone National Park, and then flows 1,740 km through Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. It joins the Columbia River just downstream from Kennewick, Washington, in the Southern Columbia Basin. Its discharge is roughly a third of the Columbia’s at the rivers’ confluence. At its mouth, the average flow of the Columbia River is 7,500 m3/s, more than 4 times greater than the Rhône.

Challenges

The Columbia River in North America faces the compounded effects of climate change and dam infrastructure, threatening native fish species such as salmon and steelhead.

“I think that there are a lot of misconceptions around the impact of hydropower when it comes to climate warming. Recent science has shown that the methane released from the reservoirs is on par with conventional coal-fired power plants in some cases.”

— Stephen Pfeiffer

Looking at solutions

Interview
– Maggie Heumann

Maggie Heumann is manager of volunteer operations at Trout Unlimited, a national non-profit organization dedicated to conserving, protecting and restoring America’s cold-water fisheries and their watersheds. A passionate angler, Maggie has worked in the fly-fishing industry for more than fifteen years, and has a deep affection for the Yellowstone River, where cutthroat trout population restoration by Trout Unlimited and other organizations has been particularly successful.

“There is no way we are going to know what we have lost until we know what is here. It is so important for us to understand what is here first before we can make any moves.”

— Maggie Heumann

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW

MORE INTERVIEWS

Ethan McLeod
Whitewater Kayaker

Maggie Heumann
Manager of Volunteer Operations

Stephen Pfeiffer
Conservation Manager

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