Sorry pal, I don't have the time or inclination to write a 20-page paper for you in order to document my statements. But they are based on information obtained directly and recently from the WDFW official responsible for issuing HPAs to dredgers who want to work outside the windows in the Gold and Fish pamphlet. (I repeat: monitoring of ongoing projects and enforcement of the existing rules -- more like guidelines -- simply isn't occurring due to funding constraints. As for game wardens doing that job, I think I've seen more unicorns than wardens on rivers in the last several years.) And yes, when fishermen routinely face stream closures and other restrictions on fishing for salmon and steelhead in Washington, it IS common sense to tighten up the existing highly permissive dredging rules because suction-dredge mining indisputably has the potential to damage streams with ESA-listed fish. (The great majority of scientists who actually have studied the issue and published papers on the subject have reached that conclusion.) Once again, why have other western states adopted far more restrictive and effective regulations on dredging or prohibited it outright? I suppose it's because their streams and fish are so much more vulnerable than our highly resilient ones, right? And we sure wouldn't want to learn anything from the experience of other states because that would just be "blindly following the lead lemming over the cliff" -- nope, don't wanna do that, no siree!

As for "pushing an agenda": you bet, my agenda here is to help protect wild salmon and steelhead for fishermen. I don't care about suction dredgers who exploit a public resource, our rivers and streams, for their own private profit and may leave those public resources degraded in a variety of ways. Personally, I would prohibit suction dredging in this state. Representative Tarleton's proposed bill doesn't do that, but it does introduce commonsense regulations to further protect our already badly degraded streams.