growing public recognition that one of the most important public uses of the tidelands and use encompassed within the tidelands trust is the preservation of those lands in their natural state, so that they may serve as ecological units for scientific study, as open space, and as environments which provide food and habitat for birds and marine life, and which favorably affect the scenery and climate of the area." As a result, Mono Lake is a navigable water, and the beds, shores, and waters of the lake are protected by the public trust. During the trial the court brought up two cases that dealt with non-navigable waterways. In 1884, the court considered impairment of navigability in the American and Sacramento rivers due to mining on their non-navigable tributaries. Gold Run Ditching and Mining Company used water cannons to wash gold bearing gravel from the hillsides. As a result, 600,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel went into the American River and washed downstream into the beds of both the American and Sacramento rivers. The court said "The State holds the absolute right to all navigable waters and the soils under them. The soil she holds as trustee of a public trust for the benefit of the people; and she may, by her legislature, grant it to an individual; but she cannot grant the rights of the people to the use of the navigable waters flowing over it…" In the second case, in 1901, the defendant in People v. Russ had built dams on sloughs, which flowed from the Salt River. The dams had been built to prevent water from flowing on to the defendant's land, but the state said they were a public nuisance. In the National Audubon case, DWP argued that when the Water Board approved a permit, the water right became a vested right. The California Supreme Court held that the public trust is "an affirmation of the duty of the state to protect the people's common heritage of streams, lakes, marshlands and tidelands, surrendering that right only in rare cases when the abandonment of that right is consistent with the purposes of the trust." The second issue in this case was whether plaintiffs must exhaust their remedies before the Water Board prior to bringing action in court. The California Supreme Court determined that remedy can be pursued from the Water Board by challenging the unreasonable or unbeneficial