A gold panner caught illegally searching for gold in a protected river has been ordered to pay fines and costs totalling more than £4,700, a regulator has said.
Environment body Natural Resources Wales (NRW) said Wright had been caught disturbing the "protected and valued environment" of Coed y Brenin Forest, which the river runs through, and was a repeat offender.
NRW manager for north-west Wales, Euros Jones, told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast that gold panning was "damaging" and could lead to a "concerning environmental cost".
3 sentences from our version of the report,
chosen to cover it. Nothing here is written; every line is in the article below.
How
Summarized version
Brian Wright had been caught panning at Afon Wen river near Dolgellau, Gwynedd, in October and December 2024.
Headline check
There is nothing in this headline a machine can check against the report: no figure, no name and no quotation.
A gold panner caught illegally searching for gold in a protected river has been ordered to pay fines and costs totalling more than £4,700, a regulator has said.
Brian Wright, 68, had been caught panning at Afon Wen river near Dolgellau, Gwynedd, in October and December 2024.
Environment body Natural Resources Wales (NRW) said Wright had been caught disturbing the "protected and valued environment" of Coed y Brenin Forest, which the river runs through, and was a repeat offender.
Gold panning is not allowed on NRW-managed land because of the potential damage to river ecosystems.
The environment body said the excavation of gravel and the removal of minerals could disturb riverbeds, impacting habitats that wildlife rely on.
NRW manager for north-west Wales, Euros Jones, told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast that gold panning was "damaging" and could lead to a "concerning environmental cost".
Shortened to 1 minute
of reading, this version reads 6.6 on the Niral Score.
You are reading our version, not theirs.
This is BBC News (Science and Environment)'s report shortened to its most important sentences, in plainer words, with
verdicts and loaded words taken out. Plain description stays, and so do adjectives
that carry a fact, such as "former" or "federal". The reporting, the facts and the quotations
are theirs — quotations are never edited — and the indicators beside it measure
this version. Hover or tap Adjectives to see every one left in the text.
How this outlet filed it, and how we rewrote it
No other newsroom we read has filed on this event, so there is nothing to compare it with yet.
Readers can ask a question about this story here.
Questions and answers are for subscribers.
Sign in
to read them.
Comments are read before they appear where anything in them needs a person to look.
Nothing posted here is ever deleted; a comment taken down keeps its text and the reason,
so the decision can be looked at again. How this works
