Prospectors, an Endangered Species? Page 4 of 6

If I were younger than 68-years on this earth, I would research the USGS reports of Valdimer Lingdron (sp?), or old prospectors accounts, of what they thought they might have found. Sometimes the modern prospector has a transportation advantage over old timers. Yet, there are places in the Interior (a desert covered with muskeg standing waters where mosquitoes breed) where their isn’t enough dry land to set an airplane wheel down, or a float plane needed to supply jet fuel to keep short range choppers fueled, can be substained by boat and outboard kicker. This and roadless areas impossible to explore without carrying a couple of months worth of grub on you back —beyond the limit of the trendy weekend backpack warrior– leads to opportunity for real prospectors.

I wonder if younger prospectors would have the grit to spend a season dragging a boat up a river by wading ahead in ice cold water, pulling a line, to winter, to then spend a summer digging a shaft through permafrost to bedrock, to winter, to finish washing when the water ran once again, before shoving off downstream to head home once again? Or even to fight hordes of black flys dragging a light weight prospecting outfit up and over an uncharted devide? Don't use environmential restrictions as a way to whimp out. A shovel, grizzly shaker, and gold pan is still considered acceptable — and they don't take high priced gasoline.

Major corporations having witnessed national TV coverage of our beloved caribou escaping mosquitoes by romping over lush and beautiful hill and dales, hundreds of miles south of the bleak flatness of the Arctic tidal plain protected by nature lovers as “The ANWAR,” have been only picking battles their legions of in-house attorneys can win. The jury is still out on the environmental impact of surface dredging upon the deposition of addromenous fish eggs spawns.

The largest mining operation north of the Arctic Circle — strong enough to get a State of Alaska road to tidewater built— almost was closed due to the fact that fish were migrating up Red Dog Creek. The interesting ignored fact was that Cominico had curtailed the eon long natural fact of zinc leeching into a spring run-off, so that salmon — for the first time ever!— were coming up the stream to spawn. So much for back East, Ivy League, publish of perish, office naturalists.

As an aside I know the truth of the Oregon spotted owl, but am afraid to tell you here as I know what how our Great White Forked Tongue Father in Washington treated patriotic Territorial Alaskans (which we still are) during World War II. Know that there are loyal Alaskans who used to work for the now defunct U.S. Bureau of Mines, trying to help the endangered U.S. Geological Survey, survive the Enron/Arthur Anderson/SEC/Wall Street inspired takeover of America’s natural resources. Remember that the ordinary people of this state benefit from both mining and oil revenue through royalties generated from what really are public lands. That an Alaskan State Legistlurer was the only politician in America to protest the incongruity of monopolistic oil companies continually raising pump prices to reach the highest level of corporate greed ever recorded in the atta-a-good-old-boy-stick-it-to-the-public Guinness Book of Records. For background, he was beat down, just as another unfortunately PAC supported U.S. Senator will be for having the gall to suggest Halliburten was supporting terrorists in Iran through their offshore subsidiaries of the only corporation that has really benefited the non-divested Deputy Commander-in-Chief of these United States.