Mexican marijuana cartels sully US forests, parks

Mexican marijuana cartels sully US forests, parks

By TRACIE CONE - 16 hours ago

PORTERVILLE, Calif. (AP) - National forests and parks - long popular with
Mexican marijuana-growing cartels - have become home to some of the most
polluted pockets of wilderness in America because of the toxic chemicals
needed to eke lucrative harvests from rocky mountainsides, federal officials
said.

The grow sites have taken hold from the West Coast's Cascade Mountains, as
well as on federal lands in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Seven hundred grow sites were discovered on U.S. Forest Service land in
California alone in 2007 and 2008 - and authorities say the
1,800-square-mile Sequoia National Forest is the hardest hit.

Weed and bug sprays, some long banned in the U.S., have been smuggled to the
marijuana farms. Plant growth hormones have been dumped into streams, and
the water has then been diverted for miles in PVC pipes.

Rat poison has been sprinkled over the landscape to keep animals away from
tender plants. And many sites are strewn with the carcasses of deer and
bears poached by workers during the five-month growing season that is now
ending.

"What's going on on public lands is a crisis at every level," said Forest
Service agent Ron Pugh. "These are America's most precious resources, and
they are being devastated by an unprecedented commercial enterprise
conducted by armed foreign nationals. It is a huge mess."

The first documented marijuana cartels were discovered in Sequoia National
Park in 1998. Then, officials say, tighter border controls after Sept. 11,
2001, forced industrial-scale growers to move their operations into the
United States.

Millions of dollars are spent every year to find and uproot
marijuana-growing operations on state and federal lands, but federal
officials say no money is budgeted to clean up the environmental mess left
behind after helicopters carry off the plants. They are encouraged that Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who last year secured funding for eradication,
has inquired about the pollution problems.

In the meantime, the only cleanup is done by volunteers. On Tuesday, the
nonprofit High Sierra Trail Crew, founded to improve access to public lands,
plans to take 30 people deep into the Sequoia National Forest to carry out
miles of drip irrigation pipe, tons of human garbage, volatile propane
canisters, and bags and bottles of herbicides and pesticides.

"If the people of California knew what was going on out there, they'd be up
in arms about this," said Shane Krogen, the nonprofit's executive director.
"Helicopters full of dope are like body counts in the Vietnam War. What does
it really mean?"

Last year, law enforcement agents uprooted nearly five million plants in
California, nearly a half million in Kentucky and 276,000 in Washington
state as the development of hybrid plants has expanded the range of climates
marijuana can tolerate.

"People light up a joint, and they have no idea the amount of environmental
damage associated with it," said Cicely Muldoon, deputy regional director of
the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service.

As of Sept. 2, more than 2.2 million plants had been uprooted statewide. The
largest single bust in the nation this year netted 482,000 plants in the
remote Sierra of Tulare County, the forest service said.

Some popular parks also have suffered damage. In 2007, rangers found more
than 20,000 plants in Yosemite National Park and 43,000 plants in Sequoia
Kings Canyon National Park, where 159 grow sites have been discovered over
the past 10 years.

Agent Patrick Foy of the California Department of Fish and Game estimated
that 1.5 pounds of fertilizers and pesticides is used for every 11.5 plants.

"I've seen the pesticide residue on the plants," Foy said. "You ain't just
smoking pot, bud. You're smoking some heavy-duty pesticides from Mexico."

Scott Wanek, the western regional chief ranger for the National Park
Service, said he believes the eradication efforts have touched only a small
portion of the marijuana farms and that the environmental impact is much
greater than anyone knows.

"Think about Sequoia," Wanek said. "The impact goes well beyond the acreage
planted. They create huge networks of trail systems, and the chemicals that
get into watersheds are potentially very far-reaching - all the way to
drinking water for the downstream communities. We are trying to study that
now."