Miners are Shutting Mining Down
By: Danny VanDerschelden
Well lets see how many people I can piss off tonight…
It’s no secret that our industry is under attack. Environmental extremist are effectively running Oregon and California and they are hell bent on destroying our way of life and our livelihood. While we should fight fiercely against this EVIL anti-human movement, the truth is that members of the mining community itself are partially to blame.
First of all if we want the Government to take our industry seriously we must first take it seriously ourselves. If you mine just for fun and you don’t care about making a profit that’s great, but by all that is good please stop constantly repeating that you cant make money mining. For some reason we think its cute and fun to joke about how there is no money to be made mining for gold. We share memes about how we load $10000 worth of equipment in to a $4000 truck just to find $40 worth of gold. Some of us even go as far as to actively discourage new miners by beating the enthusiasm out of them by repeating this tired mantra.
For starters this is simply not true. Mining is one of if not the largest industry on planet Earth. There are billionaires who sell dirt for a few bucks a yard, and yet you don’t think there is any economic potential in producing one of the most treasured and expensive things in the world? How do you think it looks when we argue to the Government that they should free up mining because of the benefits it provides to our local economies and then we publicly preach that there isn’t any money being made? If we want the Government to take us seriously we must first take ourselves seriously.
Secondly, we must stop shutting ourselves down for them. In Oregon, dredging is only banned in ESH streams. There are plenty of legal to dredge rivers that we could be dredging in right now but we are choosing not to. So really, who is shutting down dredging?
Many miners are now retreating statewide because the Oregon DEQ is considering not issuing dredging permits for the Sharps and Brice Creek area. This is certainly alarming and needs to be fought vigorously. However, instead of fighting it, many miners are now scraping their dredging aspirations on legal to dredge streams that the DEQ isn’t even talking about. How much easier could we possibly make it for our enemies? We are literately shutting ourselves down quicker then they can!
Now here is the good news. First of all rural Oregonians are waking up in a massive way. Either the Government of the state is going to change its ways or the State of Jefferson is inevitable. Also, like him or not, the Trump Administration is starting to at least listen to our concerns. But for the shrewd miner there is even better news…
Baron Rothschild once said, “the time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.” And in the small scale mining industry the streets are soaked. Used mining equipment can be purchased for peanuts. Mining claims, many of which would otherwise not be available at any price, are cheap. Now only if there was a reputable site to buy some mining claims…
