Currently, the state of Washington is one of the last states with very little regulation on a practice known as Motorized Recreational Mineral Prospecting or more commonly known as, "suction dredging," a process where stream beds are vacuumed-up and processed through a sluice in search of gold.

Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on fish habitat restoration efforts throughout Washington State’s watersheds over the past 20+ years, and MRMP undermines these efforts by unraveling the beds and banks of streams that are critical to the survival of the native fish species these projects are designed to benefit.