Illegal Marijuana ‘Farms’ Result in Major Environmental Damage to Vulnerable Environmental Areas of Parkland

BY BILL KOENEKER

A recent raid on a marijuana farm that yielded $10 million in plants in a remote section of the Santa Monica Mountains on National Park Service property points to a growing problem on public lands.

The wilderness pot farms are wrecking havoc on the environment. The labor-intensive operations now include watering systems, use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, according to authorities.

The marijuana garden was spotted from a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Dept. helicopter in August in upper Trancas Canyon. After several weeks of surveillance, a tactical team comprised of NPS and Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority rangers entered the location on Sept. 19, according to a NPS report.

Over 3900 marijuana plants with a street value in excess of $10 million were found at the site along with large amounts of plastic PVC irrigation hose and empty pesticide and insecticide containers.

NPS and MRCA staff, supported by additional personnel from Channel Islands and Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks, cut and piled the plants and loaded both plants and garbage into large sling bags for removal by air, according to the report.

The plants were then taken to the county landfill, under armed escort, for destruction.

The report goes on to state safety concerns in the remote area were numerous, including the possibility of armed growers still in the vicinity and their booby traps.

Resource impacts were significant, including the destruction of native vegetation in a pristine area, soil disturbance that promotes invasive weeds, residual effects from the herbicides and fertilizers used and the establishment of pits for trash and human waste, according to NPS authorities.

The amount of human activity required to grow the illegal crops is causing widespread damage in the National Parks, SMMNRA included, leading some experts to suggest it has become the biggest threat in the nation’s cherished parks.

The herbicides and pesticides used to remove small native animals and competing vegetation, actually native plants, spill into the streams and waterways. The irrigation systems can dewater those small streams and compact soils in the gardens leading to erosion.

Growers clear trees and brush to cultivate the weed. Some sophisticated operations even include terracing hillsides that stir up soils and attract plants that would otherwise not grow. The diversion of water is hindering the movement of wildlife and pollution from fertilizer runoff is killing fish.

In some locations, thick brush is hacked and trees stripped of limbs. Irrigation hoses can be as long as a mile and the terraced hillsides are dotted with hundreds of deep holes that hold the marijuana plants.

The trend is for the growers to live on and sometimes off the land. The amount of trash is staggering in the wildland areas with empty soda and beer cans, food wrappers, propane canisters, discarded clothing and human waste.

Authorities are also finding animal traps, pellet guns, slingshots and in one instance, a rabbit hutch, suggesting the growers are hunting for food.

A ranger here in the local mountains said during a recent raid, law enforcement encountered no rattlesnakes where there should have been some. “People don’t understand how these operations ae impacting parklands. The NAS doesn’t have the money to do the necessay restoration,” the ranger said.

The pot farm in the Santa Monicas was planted along the streamside, meaning the pesticides and herbicides will eventually flow directly into the creek and the riparian corridor was torn up to make way for the marijuana plants.

The massive scale of the operations, which at one time were more generally confined to Northern California, has spread to all of the parks in the state.

Visitors, who used to worry most about encountering a bear, now have to contend with masked gunmen carrying an AK-47.

More than 100,000 plants have been seized in Sequoia-King’s Canyon National Park since 2004 and recently a pot farm was discovered in Yosemite.

Park rangers acknowledge that for years they might have stumbled across a small stand or patch of the illegal substance, but in the past five years individuals have gone from planting a little more or less than an acre to hundreds of acres scattered over public lands

Authorities say the change can be attributed to crops being handled by a handful of Mexican drug cartels, which have taken over the state’s billion-dollar marijuana industry. The California product can sell for around $4000 per pound.

The center of the industry has spread from the so-called Emerald Triangle around the Mendocino area into the Sierra foothills and the mountains southward.

The national forests are not immune. The Forest Service said 440,000 plants were seized on forest lands. In a news release issued by the Forest Service, visitors are advised to watch out for illegal marijuana gardens, which are grown in very remote locations and tend to be away from areas that are frequented by the public.

The question of restoration is only now being discussed, but in most instances, the NPS does not allocate money for such an undertaking.

Sequoia-King’s Canyon NP has spent more than $72,000 during the past two years to clean up 81 cultivation sites.

No one knows how much fertilizer and pestic.

That coupled with the ever growing involvement of the Mexican drug cartels in the marijuana trade, has caused the problem to reach a critical juncture.

A recent study suggests marijuana is the leading cash crop in the state and the nation and eradication campaigns have done little to reduce the availability of the illegal substance.

Published reports indicate that $1.3 million a year in federal money supports the eradication programs which last year resulted in 477 raids in 34 counties yanking out plants valued at $6.7 billion.