In 2002, of land on the Little Chetco River were sold to Washington real estate developer David Rutan, only several months after the Biscuit Fire tore through the region. He opened a gold mining camp on the site in 2007, flying in customers by helicopter. Curry County officials soon stated that the camp violated zoning and sanitation laws, but inspections were stymied because of the area's inaccessibility. Rutan bought several more claims in the Wild and Scenic section of the Chetco River in the following years, beginning inside the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, and ending downstream. Despite environmentalists' concerns, he proposed mining the Chetco riverbed for gold and minerals via commercial suction dredges, permitted by the General Mining Act of 1872. In 2010, the Chetco River was identified as the seventh most endangered river in America by advocacy organization American Rivers, facing a threat of "motorized instream mining". Oregon's governor, Ted Kulongoski, two senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and congressman Peter DeFazio all asked the United States Department of Agriculture to withdraw the Chetco River from the 1872 Mining Act, thus preventing mineral mining on the river. However, Rutan forfeited his claims by not paying his annual filing fees to the Bureau of Land Management in 2011.