FOREST POT FARMS A MENACE TO LAND

Drug agents sniffed out a major marijuana patch at Palomar Mountain
State Park a few months ago in the kind of raid that has become all
too common on U.S. public lands.

What officials initially thought might be a few hundred plants ended
up being 15,000. Police also found two men and a woman tending the
plots, whose yield would have been worth $60 million on the street.

The crop tenders scampered into the woods, leaving behind trash and
terraces they had formed on the hillside. Initial repairs to such an
area can cost taxpayers $10,000 per acre for staff time and a
helicopter to haul away garbage, said the Office of National Drug
Control Policy. On average, ten acres are fouled for every acre of
marijuana planted in forests and on other public lands, the agency said.

"The whole process of these marijuana plantations brutalizes the
landscape," said David Graber, Pacific West regional science chief
for the National Park Service.

The outdoor growing season for marijuana is coming to a close for the
year, but some scars left by clandestine pot farms will take months
to heal. Anti-drug agencies must deal with tons of trash, human
waste, erosion and other forms of soil disturbance, loss of
vegetation and chemical pollution that kills marine life.

The illegal plots also increase poaching of wildlife, raise the
threat of wildfires started accidentally at campsites and put outdoor
enthusiasts in harm's way. For instance, the U.S. Forest Service
recently warned deer hunters to avoid two areas in Mendocino and
Glenn counties until authorities could evict the marijuana growers.

Marijuana production on public lands in the United States has risen
as the nation moves to further secure its borders and slow the
movement of marijuana from Mexico. Mexican organized crime is behind
the surge in such illegal plantings, according to law enforcement agencies.

Growers favor public property partly because if their plants are
discovered, they can flee without leaving behind traceable evidence.
But there are other reasons for the popularity of forests and parks.

"The nation's public lands have become a haven for this illegal
activity due to the relatively few law enforcement personnel and the
vast and often remote tracks of sparsely or uninhabited lands," said
the U.S. Forest Service's 2005 marijuana report. Authorities -- from
the White House down to the local level -- are paying more attention
to the expanding practice of marijuana farming on public lands,
especially national forests in California. Federal agents say that
about 4.5 million outdoor marijuana plants have been seized
nationwide this year, largely from public lands. That pace is well
ahead of the 2005 count.

The problem has become so pervasive that President Bush's drug czar
visited the Sequoia National Forest in August to discuss why drug
cartels are having such success.

"Every American should be outraged that parts of their public lands
are being held hostage by illegal drug traffickers," John Walters,
director of national drug-control policy, said at the time.

Appealing Sites

More than half the marijuana plants detected on public lands
nationwide are in California, which has eight of the 10 U.S. national
forests with the highest number of pot plants confiscated. And 2006
looks to be another record year for seizures. About 2.8 million
marijuana plants were seized from outdoor farms in California through
August, records show. About 75 percent of those seizures were on public lands.

The Cleveland National Forest, which cuts through central San Diego
County, didn't rank among the national leaders in 2005, but
authorities say about 13,000 plants were eradicated there last year.

Those Cleveland plantations caused ecological damage to 33 acres.
Nationwide, the total reaches thousands of acres, according to the
Office of National Drug Control Policy.

In San Diego County, the multiagency Marijuana Eradication Team
removed about 250,000 plants from large-scale outdoor farms so far
this year. This is about 30 percent higher than last year but below
the average of about 300,000 plants in each of the past five years.

Anti-narcotics experts say the annual seizure totals nationwide vary
based on enforcement pressure, weather and planting trends within the
multibillion-dollar marijuana industry. In 2005, for example, heavy
spring rains likely discouraged some growers and probably accounted
for the county's lower eradication totals.

Some authorities say the escalating number of marijuana seizures on
public lands in California indicate their enforcement methods are
becoming more effective.

Robin Schwanke, spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office,
credits the rise to better surveillance and increased understanding
of what areas the growers prefer.

Others say cash-strapped, thinly staffed enforcement agencies aren't
the reason for the rising rate of marijuana busts.

"At a grand scale, I see no solution anytime soon," said Graber of
the National Park Service. "At a local scale, the most we can hope
for is that we harass (the growers) enough that they go somewhere else."

Relatively few marijuana farms are found on public lands closest to
the U.S.-Mexico border because the presence of immigration agents
deters many potential growers.

But a few miles to the north, "any place you can think of that there
would be water, they are growing it," said Greg Meese, the patrol
captain for the Cleveland National Forest.

Lasting Degradation

To make way for their crops, pot growers routinely use pesticides to
remove swaths of native shrubs and grasses. Their plots often spread
over dozens of acres. Taller trees are left as cover against aerial
checks by police helicopters. In a forest, the low-level plants keep
dirt from washing into streams during rainfall. After the marijuana
is harvested and winter rains come, the barren patches are highly
susceptible to soil erosion. The result is that waterways in some of
California's most pristine watersheds become polluted.

Marijuana growers also dam streams, haul in small pumps and run
plastic irrigation lines through the forest to water their crops. The
result can be dramatic changes to creeks that native fish rely on.

Often, the marijuana operations are highly sophisticated and may take
weeks to set up.

A few years ago, Meese discovered an irrigation system that included
pools up to 15 feet wide and just as deep.

"The head pressure in the (marijuana) garden hose was better than
what you typically find in your home," he said.

Growers commonly import rat poison to kill the critters that like to
eat their profit-generating plants. They also use lots of chemical
fertilizers to keep their plants green. These substances can easily
contaminate nearby creeks, promoting algae blooms that can use up the
oxygen in the water and kill fish.

In one case, Graber said his first clue about the presence of a major
marijuana operation was extremely high nitrate levels that were
detected during routine water monitoring.

A pot farm's most visible impact is trash. Marijuana growers commonly
live with their plants for weeks or months at a time. At a large
farm, the litter can weigh several tons and include miles of irrigation pipe.

"The camps themselves are filthy. There is garbage everywhere --
anything you can think of that you would generate in your home . . .
including human waste," Meese said.

Threats to wildlife compound the other environmental concerns.

"At almost every (garden) we come across, there is some evidence of
poaching, whether it be poaching salmon out of the creeks in Butte
County or poaching deer," said Patrick Foy, spokesman for the
California Department of Fish and Game.

In one instance, law enforcement agents found a camp where the
tenants were making jerky out of three foxes they'd caught.

"These folks already have complete disregard for the law . . . so
when anything that would serve as a food source comes by, they often
take advantage of that," Foy said.

But perhaps the most serious danger is to unsuspecting hikers,
hunters and mountain bikers who cross into marijuana farms, some of
which are protected by booby traps and barbed wire. Most farms are
well off the beaten path, but reports of run-ins between the public
and growers have become routine.

On Sept. 30, for example, a hunter in the Mendocino National Forest
said he stumbled onto the edge of a marijuana patch and found four
men pointing rifles at him. They started firing but the hunter
escaped unharmed, according to a Forest Service report.

Such incidents usually lead to raids by law enforcement teams. Once
authorities haul away and destroy the marijuana plants, they remove
the leftover garbage and leave the land to repair itself over time.

That was the case this summer on Palomar Mountain, where crews took
out the trash and let nature take its course. Within several weeks,
the native vegetation was resprouting, said Jim Dice, a senior
environmental scientist for California State Parks.

"Any active restoration," he said, "would probably be more damaging
than leaving it alone."