A battle over gold mining is brewing on the Klamath River and its tributaries, pitting the Karuk Tribe in Orleans against a quickly growing club called the New 49'ers Inc.

The Karuk Tribe and the California Department of Fish and Game recently reached an agreement to impose new regulations on suction dredge mining on the mid-Klamath and its tributaries. The technique of vacuuming creek beds to find gold harms threatened salmon, sturgeon and lamprey, the Karuks say.

The dredges suck material up from the bottom of a stream and send it into equipment that recovers heavier gold. The gravel and sand is sent back into the stream.

Gold panning -- in which small amounts of gravel are processed in a pan -- would not be affected by the regulations.

The tribe sued the department in May 2005, alleging that Fish and Game didn't rewrite its mining regulations after it protected coho salmon, green sturgeon and lamprey. That violated the California Environmental Quality Act, the tribe claimed.

”What we're trying to do is protect the most critical cold water refugia for spawning and migration,” said Craig Tucker, a spokesman with the Karuk Tribe.

The new regulations apparently caught gold miners off guard.

This month, the New 49'ers rifled back in Oakland Superior Court -- where the Karuk's challenge was filed. The club claimed that there is no evidence that suction dredging harms salmon, and in any case, Fish and Game must go through the public rule-making process before issuing new regulations -- or be in violation of CEQA.

New 49'ers member and Klamath River claim owner Mike Higbee said the new regulations would severely limit money-making opportunities. He said the miners are being singled out when other users like fishermen have a greater effect on salmon.

”We're being singled out as this murderous group when there's not a single study showing we've ever killed a fish,” Higbee said. “I'm sure the Karuk folks dip-netting at Ishi Pishi Falls have an effect on them.”

Which is where something of a clash of cultures becomes evident, with miners clinging to 1872 federal mining law as preserving a right to gather gold, and the Karuks who depended on salmon for subsistence for hundreds of years but are now unable to catch substantial numbers of fish. Tucker said the tribe wants salmon to thrive so it can again catch fish.

The department rules would arbitrarily close 100 miles of rivers and creeks to the increasingly common method of culling out gold from stream gravel, the miners claim.

But the Karuks said the agreement leaves open another 250 miles for mining, and some areas closed during the fall, winter and spring would be open during summer months. The thermal refuges that salmon rely on during warm weather -- typically where creeks run into rivers -- are too important to be disturbed, according to the tribe. That's especially in light of the sometimes severe fish troubles on the Klamath, Tucker said.

In several years since 2000, thousands of adult and young salmon have been killed by diseases made more potent to fish in warm, low-water conditions. Last summer, divers in the clean-running Salmon River found fewer that 100 fish in a river that averages 750. Last year fishing quotas in the Klamath and off the North Coast were tightened and fish managers could be facing the same scenario this year.

Oakland Superior Court Judge Bonnie Sabraw will weigh the miners' claim and the stipulated agreement between the state and the tribe at a hearing on Jan. 26.