Brian Wright, a 69-year-old hobbyist gold panner from Henley-on-Thames, has been convicted of causing environmental damage to a river in Snowdonia's so-called "Welsh Klondike", four years after he was first prosecuted for the same activity. Llandudno Magistrates' Court found him guilty of digging up material from the riverbank and disturbing the riverbed of the Afon Wen, despite his argument that gold panning was part of the area's cultural heritage and that Forestry Commission bylaws did not apply to the riverbed itself. The case matters because it underlines authorities' determination to protect the river's fragile ecosystem, which supports trout, salmon and eels, from repeated unauthorised prospecting in a designated gold belt.

District judge Gwyn Jones fined Wright £1,900 and ordered him to pay £2,800 in costs, after prosecutors said he had been told "on many, many occasions" that panning was banned on rivers controlled by Natural Resources Wales, which brought the case. Wright, a trustee of the Gold Rivers Trust charity, denied the charges and said he was considering an appeal, while advising other prospectors against bothering with the river as "there's not a fortune to be made". He was previously convicted in 2022 for similar offences at the same river and fined £600 with £2,400 costs, after being filmed panning in defiance of a prohibition sign.