Columbia River Basin Area Agricultural Program: Summary Report

Excerpts from the report: The Columbia River Basin area as used in this report occupies 176.3 million acres of land and water in the northwestern corner of the United States. It includes all of the State of Washington most of Oregon and Idaho, western Montana, and small parts of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. The streams of Oregon and Washington which flow directly into the Pacific Ocean or Puget Sound are also included. On the east the area is bounded by the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains, on the north by the Canadian border, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. On the south the boundary approximates the southern rim of the Snake River, Harney Basin, Rogue River, and Chetco River watersheds. Some 23 million acres of the Columbia River drainage in Canada are not covered in this report. To bring the area's agriculture resource development and conservation into proper balance and to coordinate such development with other planned resource utilization, the Department of Agriculture has prepared this Summary Report, Columbia River Basin Area Agricultural Program. The agricultural program report consists of three phases. It contains an inventory of the agricultural resources--forests, ranges, croplands, water and allied resources; it contains a review of the problems associated with the development, conservation and utilization of these resources; and it contains recommendations for a program of measures and practices designed to permit the maximum economic development consistent with proper conservation and utilization of the area's agricultural and allied resources.