Minstrel
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California, the state built on gold prospecting, is set to outlaw ... gold prospecting
There's gold in them thar hills, but pretty soon you won't be allowed to touch it.
In California, the state built on gold, the time is up for prospectors who are about to see their way of life declared illegal.
Just 162 years after history's biggest gold rush, diggers - or dredgers as they now are - are losing a long-running battle with environmentalists.
The reason for this mammoth fight is ... salmon.
At the center of the battle is suction dredging, today's mechanized version of gold panning.
Up to 4,000 people in California use suction dredging to extract gold.
It involves motorized rigs which act like giant vacuum cleaners, sucking up mud and gravel from the bottom of a watercourse and then using gravity to sort tiny quantities of gold from the rocks and dirt.
Environmentalists say the technique disturbs riverbeds where fish such as pacific salmon lay their eggs.
The salmon population has fallen steeply in the Golden State.
The environmentalists also say the dredging releases poisonous mercury into the water.
They persuaded California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to agree to a two-year moratorium on suction dredging in 2009 while scientists compile an impact report.
The 800-page report has been finished at a cost of $1.5million.
It recommends that the dredging can carry on, but under a strict set of conditions dictating the size of the machines and when they can be used.
It says that dredging should be banned in some ecologically important rivers and streams.
The report's findings are due to come into effect in six months.
But opponents of dredging, with the help of Democratic state assemblyman Jared Huffman, have managed to amend California's proposed budget in a way that will extend the moratorium for at least five years, and maybe forever.
A paragraph in the document was changed to ensure that the Department of Fish and Game cannot spend any money reissuing dredging licenses until 2017.
People in the gold business are not too happy about the amendment.
Rachel Dunn, an amateur prospector who runs Gold Pan California in Sacramento, said: 'It's crazy. It's a circumvention of due process, in which a cheap political maneuver has been used to circumvent science.
'They should be ashamed. Gold is the industry that built California. What they are doing is just total lunacy.'
Gold prices are currently at a record high of more than $1,500 an ounce.
With California's unemployment rate at ten per cent, critics say the state cannot afford to criminalize potentially lucrative industry.
Many communities in remote areas rely on income from the prospectors who visit each year, the Independent on Sunday reports.
Bruce Johnson, who owns a campground in Seiad Valley in the heart of gold country, said: 'We are holding on for dear life out here and the gold miners could immediately help ease the burden. Is the legislation intentionally dysfunctional?'
There's gold in them thar hills, but pretty soon you won't be allowed to touch it.
In California, the state built on gold, the time is up for prospectors who are about to see their way of life declared illegal.
Just 162 years after history's biggest gold rush, diggers - or dredgers as they now are - are losing a long-running battle with environmentalists.
The reason for this mammoth fight is ... salmon.
At the center of the battle is suction dredging, today's mechanized version of gold panning.
Up to 4,000 people in California use suction dredging to extract gold.
It involves motorized rigs which act like giant vacuum cleaners, sucking up mud and gravel from the bottom of a watercourse and then using gravity to sort tiny quantities of gold from the rocks and dirt.
Environmentalists say the technique disturbs riverbeds where fish such as pacific salmon lay their eggs.
The salmon population has fallen steeply in the Golden State.
The environmentalists also say the dredging releases poisonous mercury into the water.
They persuaded California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to agree to a two-year moratorium on suction dredging in 2009 while scientists compile an impact report.
The 800-page report has been finished at a cost of $1.5million.
It recommends that the dredging can carry on, but under a strict set of conditions dictating the size of the machines and when they can be used.
It says that dredging should be banned in some ecologically important rivers and streams.
The report's findings are due to come into effect in six months.
But opponents of dredging, with the help of Democratic state assemblyman Jared Huffman, have managed to amend California's proposed budget in a way that will extend the moratorium for at least five years, and maybe forever.
A paragraph in the document was changed to ensure that the Department of Fish and Game cannot spend any money reissuing dredging licenses until 2017.
People in the gold business are not too happy about the amendment.
Rachel Dunn, an amateur prospector who runs Gold Pan California in Sacramento, said: 'It's crazy. It's a circumvention of due process, in which a cheap political maneuver has been used to circumvent science.
'They should be ashamed. Gold is the industry that built California. What they are doing is just total lunacy.'
Gold prices are currently at a record high of more than $1,500 an ounce.
With California's unemployment rate at ten per cent, critics say the state cannot afford to criminalize potentially lucrative industry.
Many communities in remote areas rely on income from the prospectors who visit each year, the Independent on Sunday reports.
Bruce Johnson, who owns a campground in Seiad Valley in the heart of gold country, said: 'We are holding on for dear life out here and the gold miners could immediately help ease the burden. Is the legislation intentionally dysfunctional?'
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