GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Clifford R. Tracy doesn’t fit the Hollywood image of a gold miner.
He is clean shaven and well spoken and only 38 years old.
Last year, he was convicted of illegal mining along Sucker Creek on U.S. Forest Service property in southwest Oregon. He chopped down trees, dug mining pits and diverted a stream without permission.
Now he is apply to mine just downstream on Bureau of Land Management property next to the creek. It also is one of Oregon’s top streams for wild coho.
So fishermen, environmentalists and Tracy are getting ready for a showdown between the Gold Mining Law of 1872 and the Endangered Species Act, adopted 101 years later.
