Marijuana in your national park

Marijuana in your national park


John Driscoll/The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 09/28/2008 01:34:04 AM PDT


It looked something like slash-and-burn agriculture -- in a national park.

Trees hacked, pot-holed ground, bare slopes, and hundreds of yards of black pipe, fertilizer, and a camp with propane stoves, cooking oil and food. In Copper Creek in the Bald Hills between Orick and Hoopa, last week, a Redwood National Park crew went to survey the damage from a major marijuana grow busted earlier this month.

Local, state and federal agents broke up the operation and seized nearly 9,600 plants. Five illegal aliens were detained nearby during the operation, and while suspected of involvement were not arrested.

The work that went into the grow was enormous. About 5 acres was cleared of dense brush -- most of it done by hand -- and large areas were terraced and planted. A trail network connected the five distinct sites and the "hooch," the camp built survival-style with raised beds made of tanoak poles and ferns.

It is a steep, long hike through huckleberry, tanoak, downed timber and poison oak.

"This is where they like to put them," said park Supervising Ranger Corky Farley of illegal grows on public land, "where no one will go."

All of the material needed for the grow would have been packed down on foot. There was evidence that the growers would dry the pot, bag it on site, and then pack it out. At the end of the season, had the grow not been busted, all the material would likely have been left behind.

A few hundred feet before reaching the "hooch" two rangers with AR-15 assault rifles took off ahead to clear the area.
Growers will often defend gardens, and there was some concern that they might have returned. It appeared that they hadn't been back.

The park team was looking for fertilizers and pesticides and other hazardous materials, and accounting for the damage done on the ground, to get an idea of what it would take to rehabilitate the place.

After a couple of hours, the team found some fertilizer and possibly some pesticides. It traced a long section of black irrigation pipe to an impounded stream. Some in the team also stumbled on a small garden that hadn't been found by agents during the bust. The carcass of a Pacific fisher was found nearby.

As far as grows on public land is concerned, it wasn't as bad as some, said park Chief of Vegetation Management Leonel Arguello. No huge amount of pesticides were found, and while the area that was disturbed was large, Arguello felt that piling slash over the bare ground would stem most erosion. Redwoods cut this spring were sprouting.

"Everything grows in this park," Arguello said.

But it will be years before the site is back to normal.

Illegal grows on public land aren't new, but they have been increasing in recent years. The Redwood National Park grow is the first one officials have discovered there, and other parks have recently been introduced to such operations.

Agents broke up a 16,000-plant grow in North Cascades National Park recently, the first known grow on federal park land in Washington. Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park have also seen pot operations crop up.

The National Park Service recently vowed to aggressively fight marijuana operations.

"We cannot be complacent about this," park service Director Mary Bomar said in a statement. "Marijuana cultivation operations are dangerous, illegal and they destroy valuable natural resources people cherish."

Many of the operations have been linked to Mexican drug cartels, and often those tending the gardens are pawns in the operation. A poignant example of this was found at the Copper Creek site. Park fisheries biologist David Anderson held up a boot with a worn-through sole that had been replaced with cut-out cardboard.

"There's a sad story," Anderson said.

With the Copper Creek gardens surveyed, the Redwood National Park team has asked the National Guard to help clean up the site, hauling out garbage and other materials, which will be a major effort.

To some degree, the assessment of the grow was encouraging, in that the damage was minor compared to other operations. But it's where the grow was placed -- inside a heavily visited park that is also a World Heritage Site -- that troubled Farley.

"This site probably isn't as bad as most," Farley said, "but it's still your national park."

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