Well, it's safe then, as there is no mining in National Parks and Wilderness Areas. Ah, that is assuming that the 4 million plus visitors to Yosemite every year have no impact.
Well, it's safe then, as there is no mining in National Parks and Wilderness Areas. Ah, that is assuming that the 4 million plus visitors to Yosemite every year have no impact.
Some of the extensive environmental carnage was done well before there was a semblance of any environmental concerns among the general population or the government. It happened all over the country. The Great Depression challenged many with finding a way to stay alive and as a result, jobs were at the top of the priority list. Shortly thereafter during WW2 the Butte Hill provided nearly 25% of the minerals that the United States needed in this conflict. Like the radioactive water flowing in streams near Los Alamos New Mexico during Openheimers tenure there priorities were dialed into another set of objectives and we are paying the price for this perspective now.
Can't change what has happened in years past. What we can do is learn from those disasters and find a way to mitigate the adverse consequences of minerals extraction and processing to the highest degree possible.
Last edited by Michael Kadillak; 19-Feb-2011 at 19:51. Reason: typo
I should have said that this was in Mono County, not Inyo ... nonetheless it's a very
big county too. On the east slope of the Sierra and even some of the western slope
the greatest amount of mining was for tungsten, not gold, although the two metals
are often found in the same ore and extracted from the same mines. Right at the
beginning of the nuclear age and cold war the price of tungsten allegedly exceeded
that of gold for awhile, so miners would go to ridulous lengths to go after it, much
like uranium miners of the era. For those of you who know the eastern Sierra, there
is a remnant of a jeep trail (what's left of it is now a hiking trail) that went clear
up McGee Creek to just just below the summit of Mt Baldwin, where the mine was.
It's hard to imagine that much work being put in. But miners were a persistent lot,
even if their efforts rarely paid off financially. The Bodie hills are not strictly in the
Sierra Nevada, geologically, but in a small sub-range more properly belonging to
the Great Basin.
Chauncey - I've certainly been to places outside of Moab in Utah, for example, where thousand of trail-bikers and hikers do seem to have done a lot more damage
than even the uranium miners. But where gold mining was extensive, as in the Mother Lode area of the Sierra, the environmental and demographic changes were
vast and permanent, including the outright genocide of the native peoples. That was
a long time ago. But in the case of Yosemite Park, probably 95% of the tourists visit
only 5% of the park. There are extensive areas where footprints are rare; and this
is even more the case with the wilderness areas and parks to the south of it, where
the mountains are even higher and the canyon deeper. But pollution at the headwaters of something can cause a lot of trouble. Again, I really don't know the
specifics of this case around Bodie, but the era of reckless mining and clearcutting in
the Sierra is just plain over - there isn't that much left to either mine or profitably cut.
Its been estimated that only 10% of the gold in the Sierra Nevada was extracted during the gold rush - that 90% remains undiscovered - and ever since meeting a miner at a Friends of Bodie Day (he was a member and volunteer) I was under the impression that gold was being actively mined just outside the park boundaries. In fact during that miner told me about them finding a 30 oz nugget and I believe that one of the rangers affirmed that the mining company wanted to mine Bodie itself.
Back when gold was $35 and oz, I was told that it was possible to synthesize gold in the laboratory but at a cost of $600/oz which then wasn't economically feasible. But at the current going rate of $1400 an oz...?
There are so many scams these days that it sometimes make you wonder just what isn't.
Thomas
Scam is an understatement. The biggest problem is grandfathered inholdings in
certain otherwise designated areas. Most of that Bodie area is probably in Toiybe
Natl Forest, so not necessarily under highly restricted status, though Bodie Historical
Park itself is, and apparently is not one of the state parks slated for closure to the
public due to budget issues. I'd imagine it generates enough tourist revenue to pay
its own way. Hypothetical gold and recoverable gold are two different subjects. There is plenty of gold around, but if even the huge modernized Pine Creek mine
couldn't break even, that gives you a clue. The "easiest" gold is being vacuumed by
scuba divers from the bottoms of Mother Lode rivers, but even that is a controversial and restricted practice. To get to uptapped spots, a buddy of mine and
me would set up block and tackle and lower a big sluice box down cliffs, then form
a winch bucket-brigade, with one of us shoveling black sand at the waters edge.
A day of backbreaking work would yield about an ounce of gold - which was worth
about twenty bucks at the time!
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