A Wild River (United States, Australia, & New Zealand) or Heritage River (Canada) is a river or a river system designated by a government to be protected and kept "relatively untouched by development and are therefore in near natural condition, with all, or almost all, of their natural values intact."
Within some nation states including in the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand, and the Commonwealth of Australia, governments have opted to focus on rivers and river systems as a kind of "unmodified or slightly modified" landscape feature to protect, manage and preserve in near 'natural' condition – variously labeling or formally declaring such areas to be "Wild Rivers" (or "Heritage Rivers").
The term "wild river" may also more generically describe or identify free flowing rivers without dams.
Read more about Wild River: Concerns About The Term, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words wild and/or river:
“This wild swan of a world is no hunter’s game.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)