CONSEJO INTERNACIONAL DE TRATADOS INDIOS

Action Alert! Action Alert! Action Alert! Action Alert! Action Alert!

Karuk Tribe

Support Ban on Motorized Suction Dredge Mining in CA Streams!

Support SB670

California’s native fish populations are in a state of crisis. Tribes dependant on salmon runs cannot harvest enough fish to conduct ceremonies much less feed their members or make a living. Non-native people are affected as well. This year commercial and sport salmon fishing bans will cripple our coastal economies and many species teeter on the brink of extinction. We must act now to protect our fisheries!

Senator Wiggins (D, Santa Rosa) has introduced a bill that will make a dent in the problem by banning the controversial recreational activity known as suction dredge mining. Miners use motorized suction pumps to vacuum up the river bottom (along with small fish, salmon eggs, etc.) run through a sluice to find flakes of gold, and dump the debris back into the river. This practice has a negative impact on fish, negatively alters spawning habitat, and reintroduces mercury deposits that have lain dormant on the river bottom since the last gold rush back into the water column.

Groups such as the New 49ers have worked hard to popularize this “recreational activity” in places such as the Klamath Basin by buying up mining claims and then soliciting membership into their “club.” These clubs offer a new “frontier experience” for their members. After 150 years of genocide, gold miners are still working to destroy our fisheries and our cultures.

SB 670 would ban this practice until the California Department of Fish and Game can perform a scientific review of the practice and write new rules dictating where and when suction dredging can take place.

Support healthy rivers and Tribal communities by sending in your letter of support for SB 670 today!

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

S. Craig Tucker

Klamath Coordinator

Karuk Tribe

ctucker@karuk.us

Address letters of support the Governor Schwarzenegger but email to Teresa Schilling at Teresa.Schilling@sen.ca.gov

Sample Letter of Support for SB 670

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger:

State Capitol Building

Sacramento, CA 95814

RE: Support for SB 670

Dear Governor:

Many of California’s salmon and native trout populations are at risk of extinction in our lifetime. For most Californian’s, the loss of our fisheries represents a tragic loss of recreational opportunities or a chance to eat healthy local seafood. But for Tribes, the loss of salmon and other native fish species represents a loss of cultural identity.

Native people have served as the steward of California’s rivers and streams since the beginning of time. We learned over millennia how to harvest fish without risk of extinction. For many Tribes, ceremonies are based on the annual returns of salmon. Our cultural and spiritual identities are linked to the salmon, trout, and other fishes.

If we don’t take action today to reverse the current downward spiral, it may be too late. Our children and grandchildren will never know how to fish, or how be able to practice their religion the way their ancestors did since time immemorial.

SB 670 is not a solution to the problem, but it’s a start. Miners and other users of the resource should have to limit their activities for the sake of the fish just as fishermen have to. Please support a temporary moratorium on suction dredging until a scientific review is complete and new regulations that protect fish are in place.

Sincerely,