A miner uses the suction-dredge method on the Klamath River. Suction-dredge mining makes it faster and easier to find gold, but some think the practice is detrimental to spawning fish and river ecosystems. Photo © Shaun Walker
In the fabled year 1849, gold fever bit hard into the forested hills and salmon rivers of rugged northern California and southern Oregon. Now, with an ounce of the yellow dust fetching roughly $420, the fever is back.
Barbara Ullian experienced the intensity of gold lust firsthand while hiking in the Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon. “It’s kind of like the Old West: You’re out for a nice hike in your national forest and you don’t expect someone to step out from behind a tree with a gun and ask you what you’re doing.”
The gun-toting miner didn’t know Ullian is conservation director for the Takilma, Oregon–based Siskiyou Project, an environmental group. But other miners did; the group Oregon Independent Miners put her name, photo and address on their website with the caption “know your enemy.”
“People who live in glass houses, should not throw stones!” the website warned. “They should clean up their own mess before asking anyone else to clean up thiers [sic]. Barbara Ullian (left side) Staff Officer [sic] at the Project and direct ENEMY of natural resource use and to mining.”
Welcome to the gold rush of the new millennium.
During the original gold rush, miners had free range to seek their fortunes unhampered by environmental laws, using any technology they could. Today, the tool of choice is the suction dredge, something like a vacuum cleaner on pontoons that sucks water and gravel from the river bottom into a sluice box that lets fine gold particles settle out. The problem is, the best places to look for gold are also the best places for imperiled salmon, steelhead and sturgeon, fish that were once the mainstay of the rivers and are now at the heart of political battles as feverish as the heat brought on by gold.
A pair of lawsuits on either side of the state line raise the fundamental question: Does the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan have the teeth to take on the 1872 Mining Law? The two decisions are contradictory, and will be decided by inevitable appeals.
Under general U.S. Forest Service guidelines, miners whose efforts promise minimal impact need only get a state permit and file a notice saying they intend to work on their claim. Those claims under the 1872 law are generally unpatented, meaning the miners have rights to the minerals but don’t own the land. The agency that does own the land—in these cases, the Forest Service—is responsible for the non-mineral resources such as trees, water and fish.
Native tribes, environmentalists such as Ullian’s group, and some neighbors say that the cumulative intensity of mining operations in the area is harming salmon streams and violating the Northwest Forest Plan’s provisions for protecting waterways. Forest Service officials agree that it’s their responsibility to protect forests and waters around claims, but different jurisdictions don’t follow the same procedures. The official stance out of Washington, D.C. is that individual suction-dredge miners have little impact and so need only notify the government (and thereby the neighbors) of their intent.
“A notice of intent is basically a letter to the Forest Service saying ‘I’m going to go out and work on my mining claim’ and the Forest Service says ‘Okay, go ahead and have fun,’” says Roger Flynn of the Western Mining Action Project. “I’ve seen letters where the Forest Service says ‘Hey Bob, we find your mine is not a significant impact’ and then it says ‘Good luck this summer.’”
The aquatic conservation portion of the Northwest Forest Plan, intended to protect species such as salmon, sets a higher bar: All miners in riparian areas must file a detailed plan of operations and a plan for reclamation, and leave a bond to cover additional restoration if necessary. These requirements have been written into all forest plans within the region. But the forests at the epicenter of suction-dredge mining—those on either side of the Klamath and Siskiyou mountains—have been reluctant to enforce those rules.
A 1999 ruling, Siskiyou Project v. Rose, held that the more stringent provisions of the Northwest Forest Plan do apply.
“After the Rose case, the Forest Service went back and forth on whether it would actually require miners to submit plans of operations,” explains Pete Frost, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene, Oregon, who represented the Siskiyou Project in the case. “Ultimately, the Bush administration issued an edict that plans weren’t required unless the regulations said so. And since the administration issued that edict, the Siskiyou National Forest has not required plans for many operations in riparian reserves where salmon spawn.”
Those directives from agency leaders let local foresters determine if a particular operation will lead to “significant surface disturbance.” If not, only the notice is required.
“In the areas covered by the Northwest Forest Plan or covered by other general management guidance or strategies, forest users can conduct non-significant surface-disturbing activities without filing plans of operations per the intent of the Forest Service Mining Regulations,” wrote Larry Gadt, then director of minerals and geology management for the Forest Service, in a February 2002 memo. Regional Forester Harv Forsgren reiterated that direction in his own memo a month later.
“In other words,” Ullian says, “we’re back to square one; we’re back to the pre–Northwest Forest Plan.” The Siskiyou Project group has taken the issue back before a federal judge in Medford, Oregon, to reconfirm the earlier ruling.
Frost says formal operating plans are important because “the Forest Service then must evaluate whether to approve mining under the National Environmental Policy Act, and in that process must consider further restrictions to protect salmon. But if there’s no plan submitted, there’s no public [Environmental Act] analysis.”
Just over the Siskiyou crest in California, it’s exactly that public participation that many people want. The heat that Ullian felt walking through the woods was turned around onto members of a mining club, the New 㣕ers, when they swarmed onto the Salmon River in the summer of 2003. The club controls a number of unpatented mining claims—some leased from others, some their own—and lets members mine on any of them. In some cases, that means a half-dozen miners can be working within 200 yards of each other, locals say.
“The community reaction was intense,” says Sam Stroich, program coordinator for the Klamath Forest Alliance. “People sprayed graffiti on the road, people reportedly put poison oak on the outhouses. People fired shots. People cut down trees at the campsite where they [the miners] were camping. It was a clear indication that the community was clearly upset but didn’t feel they had a place to express their opinion. So that’s why we want [the National Environmental Policy Act]. It allows for public input.”
In 2004, Joyce Thompson, an acting district ranger on the Six Rivers National Forest, restricted suction-dredge mining on the portion of the Salmon River under her jurisdiction, citing the potential for significant disturbance. Thompson wrote that the dredges could suck up young fish of several species, and that pulling up gravel in search of gold could harm spawning habitat. Sediment plumes can reach 100 yards downstream, clogging fish gills and suffocating them. Generally, she said, mining would further stress fish already imperiled by low, warm water.
But the Klamath National Forest, whose jurisdiction covers other portions of the Salmon River, offered no similar restrictions. That inconsistency led the Karuk Tribe, the state’s second-largest, to offer its own lawsuit in October 2004, making many of the same arguments as the Siskiyou Project.
“A hundred and fifty years ago it was the 㤹ers, the gold rush, that decimated our people and our culture and our religion,” says Leaf Hillman, vice chairman of the Karuk Tribe. “The New 㤹ers are threatening the tribe by threatening the resources that the tribe depends on: the fisheries resources and our ancient village places, places where our people are buried. The point of the lawsuit is to make those federal and state agencies who do have mandatory authority under the law to do what they need to be doing in terms of regulating this essentially unregulated industry.”
In July 2005, a federal court in California ruled against the tribe and in favor of the miners and the Forest Service, directly contradicting the earlier ruling in the Siskiyou Project case.
“The issue of whether the Northwest Forest Plan has teeth to get at destructive mining is going to the 9th Circuit [Court of Appeals], either from the Karuk case or the one now pending before federal court in Medford,” says Frost. “There are hundreds of small-scale mining operations in streams where wild salmon spawn. And they should be regulated under plans of operation to protect those salmon.”
The conflict seems inevitable, since both miners and spawning salmon look for the same things in a river: low-gradient reaches with gravel of a particular size. So the question isn’t whether mining affects the fish, but rather how it affects them.
Some mining proponents, who declined to be named in print, say suction dredging helps salmon by stirring up nutrients from the sediment so young fish can feed. They say winter rains flood streams with gravel and sediment, erasing evidence of their work.
But others concede that sensitivity to salmon and local concerns is critical.
Boone Ford of Sawyers Bar, California, has been mining on the Salmon River for twenty years, earning money for college during high-school summers.
“Gold fever’s kind of an addictive thing in a way,” he says. “Once you get started, [mining’s] a fun thing to do. When I was in high school, during the summer breaks that’s all I would do is dredge. I’d make good money sometimes.”
Good money is a quarter-ounce—about $100—in a day.
Ford says the impact of mining depends on the miner. But he is concerned that members of the New 㣕ers club aren’t taught to respect the local environment. Miners can harm salmon nesting sites, pull up stream-side vegetation that keeps the river hospitable for fish, spread invasive knapweed that locals are eradicating by hand, and even start fires during the area’s hot, dry summers.
“There’s a mining claim just up the road here that’s a [New 㣕ers] mining claim … and that place looked just like Swiss cheese after one summer,” he says. “The surface impact on that claim was tremendous. They made new camping areas, they made new trails, they cut firewood from right along the river, they pulled up that riparian vegetation. I caught one in the act, actually.”
“If I, as an individual miner, was to go up there and do as much mining and surface disturbance as all these members did I would be hassled by the Forest Service. But because it’s a bunch of people moving little bits of dirt, it’s like they’re escaping through a loophole, they’re not having to get the permits that I do. It wouldn’t be a big deal if there was only one or two members doing some dredging or something, but it’s like if one person takes a stick out of the forest it’s not going to cause any problems. But if 100,000 people take a stick out of the forest, you’re not going to have a forest—at least not much of a forest anyway.”
A 2001 Siskiyou Project survey found that small miners had large impacts on local streams. The report documented that miners cut stream banks and removed boulders that had secured the land and kept sediment out of the waters. In one case, 110 square yards of potential spawning gravel had been moved, altering flow patterns in the stream. Steelhead spawned in gravels directly below mining claims, although, the report said, such gravels are unstable and could wash out during heavy winter rains. Miners left open-pit toilets near the stream, and gallon jugs of gasoline near—or in—the water.
“Observations compiled in this study demonstrate that the Siskiyou National Forest has many remote stream reaches where mining is harming riparian reserves,” the report concludes.
Frost says the Forest Service itself has found that the cumulative effects of suction dredging impair salmon habitat.
“When the Siskiyou National Forest looked at four streams to gauge the impact of this kind of mining on wild salmon,” Frost says, “they found dramatically fewer sites where salmon successfully spawn in three streams where mining occurs than they did on the fourth where no mining occurs. And that’s from the Forest Service’s own document.”
While suction-dredge seasons have been restricted to protect salmon, other key species also may be affected. For instance, little is known about green sturgeon, which have been petitioned for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act. But Hillman, of the Karuk Tribe, says the sturgeon broadcast spawn just before dredging season. The babies float through the water, unable to move themselves around, and may get sucked into the dredges along with the water, sediment, gravel and—possibly—gold.
The Klamath River flows through the heart of Karuk country, but the river is so degraded that it no longer supports the salmon on which the tribe has traditionally depended. These days it’s the tributaries like the Salmon River and smaller streams “that are keeping the system alive.”
“All through the summer months, during dredging season, tributaries are supporting unnaturally high levels of over-summer-rearing juveniles. They’re jamming in there because they have to—or die. All the creeks are now important.”
Does the Forest Service have the ability to regulate mining on its lands?
“This is mining on national forests and we are the land management authority for national forests,” says agency spokesman Matt Mathes. “We have final decision-making authority on national forests and one of our responsibilities is maintaining viable habitat for wildlife, including fish. …And we have an obligation to look at the potential effects of dredging on fisheries or fish habitat.”
That said, he concedes “we in the Forest Service recognize that we have not always been consistent in our decision making between ranger districts and even between entire National Forests.”
Flynn, who represented the Karuk Tribe and participated in the now-pending Siskiyou Project lawsuit, says the agency has a lot of power. “They say they don’t but they do. For political or whatever reasons, they always think their hands are tied.”
Frost concurs.
“The truth is, the Forest Service may restrict mining operations to protect forest resources,” he says. “Miners do have a right to enter upon lands and explore for minerals, there’s no doubt. But where mining occurs, during what time period and in what intensity is up to the Forest Service. We haven’t asked for no mining to occur on the Siskiyou. We’ve only asked that certain procedures be enforced to protect wild salmon.”
No one contests that miners have a right to minerals on their claims, unless or until the 1872 Mining Law is changed. So in the western mountains separating Oregon and California, the question is whether the Old West or the New West will prevail.