"pans and shovels" - good one..

With an average grade of around one gram a tonne and allowing for the fact that a "pan and shovel" operation would be hard pressed recovering 50% of that gold, they would need to pan over 50 tonnes of ore in order to get a single ounce. The miners working that would really have something to complain about ....

And that copper that everyone is bleating about losing... it would all go into the rivers along with the tailings....