Let's have a look at dredging shall we, how would affect us, out in the field or right here on the forum!
A few small number of people get quite wealthy out of it, while the majority start struggling to find easy access areas to go for a pan or high bank, the expense side of setting up a dredge would far out way that of pans/sluices or high bankers, so for quite a number of our forum members and others setting one up would be well outside the ball park.
You will never be able to stop some folk breaking the rules so the digging of banks ect will continue, if not worsen because of the simple fact that a dredge has gone through the area and cleaned every little bit of colour out, so mr average joe and his homemade high banker have decided to scallop out a wash line in the bank just to get some colour, Murphy's law says he's the one that'll get caught he's the who will be facing the fines, rules are rules!
About the only thing I can relate dredging too is fishing,
Set up your camp on your favourite part of the river and settle in for a weekend of fishing, only too discover someone has had a drumnet/cross lines and springers in for the past week, you'll soon start to realise all your doing is drowning worms and grubs, your favourite spot ruined, nothing left to come back too, although fish will move back in that area eventually, so will those sods with their drum nets ect!
I won't jump on the topic of environmental damage from dredging, ain't no point really, seen as though the Vic government made such a huge stuff up of the environmental study into the affects of prospecting in creeks/rivers and streams that we seen a while ago on this forum, best to keep those idiots out of the topic.
People will constantly break rules, wether it be doing 103kmh in 100 zone, illegal parking, slightly bald tires on a car, prospecting without a permit, digging in the wrong area, not backfilling holes, we're not guilty of them all but guilty of a few nonetheless, rules and laws are in place but they do get broken, I'm hopeful we won't see prospecting in areas banned because a few narrow minded LAZY sods have not back filled their holes, as I'm hopeful we won't see the speed limit on open roads dropped due too some speeding motorists.
Not Backfilling a hole as it was bought up earlier in this thread just goes to show ones character, your strait out LAZY!, in the underground mining industry we have words for this type of thing, we call you a tired ###t, we don't have a lot of time for you, and to be quite honest the air fouls when your tired lazy ass is around, so how about you just move on!
Dredging brings up the age old fact of you GREEDY BASTARD, your so caught up in your own greed you couldn't give a stuff about the weekender who goes out to grab his gram or two!.
So after you've totally flogged an area what's next?
Why you'll put your ear to the ground and use places like this forum and others like it to try and skulk out a new area to completely flog, and flog it you will, because that's what your good at, your new title is, GREEDY FLOGGER.
Now this little short type up shouldn't upset anybody, why, because it doesn't relate to YOU!, unless you can slot yourself in the above area of being a non back filler, or a greedy flogger, and if you do happen to slot yourself into this category, then all offence intended
In closing, take a moment and think about your of the beaten or easy access area you go to alluvial prospect, now imagine turning up there to find someone/s dredging it or have dredged it, how many more member meet ups would there be if the government legalised dredging let alone the minimal posts on this forum and others, dredging destroys a lot more than just prospecting areas.
