T
Tuolumne
Guest
Reclamation of the land
Its funny, I dont see enviros picking up trash in the forest, but time and time again in my life the miners are more active in reclamation of the land.
Ive always been around miners who fill their pits and take out trash. Ive never seen my hippy friends running around with bags of trash even when I went to Humboldt state
Any one do anything cool as regards to a reclamation project? Any big contracts that someone got a job from? Id like to hear what some people are doing.
Out here where I am in the Motherload of California, my bazooka, and pit I dig feeding it, isn't "significant" enough of a disturbance to need any special job. But if I had a bigger project that requires a notice of intent or a plan of operation, then you would also need reclamation permit if area of one acre disturbed or 1000 yards material moved.
On my part of the river its claimed up on all sides of me, but the first place they look at when the regulators mount up and come down for a check up is mine. I see the DFW, forest rangers, fire prevention officer for the forest service.
And they see our piles of trash that we collect, see the lead shot we are taking out of the area from the stream and from metal detecting...
How many enviros actually clean lead and amalgam up? seriously...we could go on and on
But Im first contact with them every time they check out the scene on my fork..
The Rim fire came through part of my area a few years back , one side of the creek will not be salvaged logged. The fire burned the ponderosa and black oaks, but left scared and alive were more than two dozen giant sequoias 60-80 ft tall 35 year olds within sipping distance of year round water.
Ponderosa in my area often are the first tree that gets up after fire, and the young sequoias need fire every couple dozen of years to thin out the competition.
The nearest Yosemite grove of sequoias is just a crows fly away. So Im going to help out my grove
I got some nice multi year Giant Sequoia starts from a local nursery with the same sierra climate- https://www.giant-sequoia.com/about-us/about-welkers-grove-nursery-wintertime/
I got a bunch and brought them out in the fall to plant in areas and expand the grove in the rich ash laden top soil from the fire. We got these driwater extended release water cartons already used by the forest service and BLM from office headquarters in Santa Rosa, gave me 90 days of security till the el nino kicked in, Forestry - DRiWATER
And started planting the giants on my 4 corners and filled in the gaps on the 20 acres.
I told my buddy helping me that if the ranger comes down this weekend and if he sees the starts from a distance then he will think were "growers" Im sure the year round water already causes that problem anywhere in california these days.
So the scene was: we were filling our holes and doing reclamation for the seasons end on my diggins and had the starts and driwater staged ready to go at the waters edge when the forest ranger announced his presence.
He had a camera running too on his vest which is interesting. He was probably watching us put the big boulders back into our dig for quite a few minutes. We had met previously but it was cool to have him come when we were doing reclamation.
I had two rainbows in the 5 gallon bucket seat but he was more surprised to see the Giant Sequoia trees. He was impressed with our work and also we showed him lead shot the bazooka gobbled up as we had just done a nice clean up panned down to the heavies. He said "so thats true that you guys clean up the mercury and lead"... now that he saw it with his own eyes he knows we do better than 99% of the rest who do nothing...
And I think its good to have people and regulators experience that reality.
Anyways I have good relation ship with the regulators in my area and me being first contact for a line of more professional miners with gear helps our whole area.
I think having a good relationship goes a long way with how it will play out if dredging gets back into the equation. They know were up to good in our valley and not just stereotypical miner the enviros make us out to be..
I have a new batch to go in this spring, I will update this post with photos over the next few years to show the progress, here is a picture of the next 3 year olds to go in..who knows by the time im old and if we get lucky to have a few ground brush fires this will be one giant grove in the years to come, may the roots catch all the flood gold flowing my way and yours
Its funny, I dont see enviros picking up trash in the forest, but time and time again in my life the miners are more active in reclamation of the land.
Ive always been around miners who fill their pits and take out trash. Ive never seen my hippy friends running around with bags of trash even when I went to Humboldt state
Any one do anything cool as regards to a reclamation project? Any big contracts that someone got a job from? Id like to hear what some people are doing.
Out here where I am in the Motherload of California, my bazooka, and pit I dig feeding it, isn't "significant" enough of a disturbance to need any special job. But if I had a bigger project that requires a notice of intent or a plan of operation, then you would also need reclamation permit if area of one acre disturbed or 1000 yards material moved.
On my part of the river its claimed up on all sides of me, but the first place they look at when the regulators mount up and come down for a check up is mine. I see the DFW, forest rangers, fire prevention officer for the forest service.
And they see our piles of trash that we collect, see the lead shot we are taking out of the area from the stream and from metal detecting...
How many enviros actually clean lead and amalgam up? seriously...we could go on and on
But Im first contact with them every time they check out the scene on my fork..
The Rim fire came through part of my area a few years back , one side of the creek will not be salvaged logged. The fire burned the ponderosa and black oaks, but left scared and alive were more than two dozen giant sequoias 60-80 ft tall 35 year olds within sipping distance of year round water.
Ponderosa in my area often are the first tree that gets up after fire, and the young sequoias need fire every couple dozen of years to thin out the competition.
The nearest Yosemite grove of sequoias is just a crows fly away. So Im going to help out my grove
I got some nice multi year Giant Sequoia starts from a local nursery with the same sierra climate- https://www.giant-sequoia.com/about-us/about-welkers-grove-nursery-wintertime/
I got a bunch and brought them out in the fall to plant in areas and expand the grove in the rich ash laden top soil from the fire. We got these driwater extended release water cartons already used by the forest service and BLM from office headquarters in Santa Rosa, gave me 90 days of security till the el nino kicked in, Forestry - DRiWATER
And started planting the giants on my 4 corners and filled in the gaps on the 20 acres.
I told my buddy helping me that if the ranger comes down this weekend and if he sees the starts from a distance then he will think were "growers" Im sure the year round water already causes that problem anywhere in california these days.
So the scene was: we were filling our holes and doing reclamation for the seasons end on my diggins and had the starts and driwater staged ready to go at the waters edge when the forest ranger announced his presence.
He had a camera running too on his vest which is interesting. He was probably watching us put the big boulders back into our dig for quite a few minutes. We had met previously but it was cool to have him come when we were doing reclamation.
I had two rainbows in the 5 gallon bucket seat but he was more surprised to see the Giant Sequoia trees. He was impressed with our work and also we showed him lead shot the bazooka gobbled up as we had just done a nice clean up panned down to the heavies. He said "so thats true that you guys clean up the mercury and lead"... now that he saw it with his own eyes he knows we do better than 99% of the rest who do nothing...
And I think its good to have people and regulators experience that reality.
Anyways I have good relation ship with the regulators in my area and me being first contact for a line of more professional miners with gear helps our whole area.
I think having a good relationship goes a long way with how it will play out if dredging gets back into the equation. They know were up to good in our valley and not just stereotypical miner the enviros make us out to be..
I have a new batch to go in this spring, I will update this post with photos over the next few years to show the progress, here is a picture of the next 3 year olds to go in..who knows by the time im old and if we get lucky to have a few ground brush fires this will be one giant grove in the years to come, may the roots catch all the flood gold flowing my way and yours
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