Gold Rush sees professional miners heading to Alaskan lands and tearing them apart. They drill down and search for gold, hoping to make their quota each mining season. The main stars on the show often hit their goals. However, many fans have questioned what happens to the land once the season ends.
Here is how the season ends once the cameras stop rolling and the mining there is finished.
Gold Rush Miners Have Strict Regulations To Follow
The miners on Gold Rush can’t start mining in Alaska until they have a license and permit. These have to be renewed, and the regulatory commissions can block them from getting a new claim if they feel the miners did not fulfill their obligations with the previous claims.
This includes what happens when the mining seasons end, whether they mine in Alaska, South America, or the Yukon Territories. When the miners finish their digs and have completed their gold haul, they are required to restore the land. They can’t just “cover it up.”
As the season wears on, the miners remove trees and other greenery and tear up the Earth’s surface. Once they are done, the entire area looks like a giant dead mass of brown dirt. What happens next is the Reclaimation. This is the law, and they can’t get around it. If they don’t do this, they face severe punishment.
What Is Restoration In The Mining Industry?
Restoration is the process of restoring, reclaiming, or refurbishing a product. For Gold Rush, this “product” was the land they mined. The 1902 Newlands Reclamation Act required all mining companies to reclaim the land they mined, including the irrigation processes.
In 1977, a second law, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, was passed. This act specifically targeted mining operations (coal or gold). Anyone knowingly breaking this law is fined up to $2,500 or up to a year in prison. The Gold Rush miners must perform reclamation on their land when their lease is up.
Reclamation is simple to understand but not always easy to accomplish. It must increase the land’s value or make it usable. When they arrive, they dig up all the land to find gold. When finished, they must deal with mountaintop removal, strip mining, or open-pit mining.
They must then revegetate, recontour, grade, replace topsoil, and plant trees or other greenery. When finished, the land should look as close as possible to how it did before they left.
The Gold Rush Crew Mostly Work Hard In Reclamation
Parker Schnabel has especially been vocal about the importance of reclamation. He even won the Leckie Award for Excellence in Environmental Stewardship from the Yukon government for his reclamation work at the Little Flake placer mine (via Yukon.ca).
However, on the other end of the spectrum, Tony Beets has received a few environmental violations and fines for leaving his former lands in less than optimal shape. Overall, most of the cast does the best they can to restore the land after they finish digging for gold.
