The regulations adopted last month fall sadly short on both fronts.Įven in the early days, panning for gold wasn’t an environmentally clean venture. Jerry Brown signed legislation that imposed a moratorium on the practice until 2016, by which time the state Department of Fish and Game was to adopt regulations that eliminated the potential for significant environmental damage and that set permit fees high enough to cover the state’s costs. And the competing claims aren’t over who has prospecting rights, but whether this form of mechanized gold hunting is causing irreparable harm to rivers in Northern California and the fish that swim in them. These days, though, sifting for gold is more a form of recreation than a business, and the tin pans have mostly been replaced by motorized machines called suction dredges. There’s still gold in them thar rivers, and adventurers still cherish dreams of wealth.
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