Conflict

WAR OF THE WEED

Public lands are seeing an explosion in pot growing, and not by hippies.

FAMED for the biggest trees in the world, Sequoia National Park is now No.
1 in another flora department: marijuana growing, with more land carved up
by pot growers than any other park.

Parts of Sequoia, including the Kaweah River drainage and areas off Mineral
King Road, are no-go zones for visitors and park rangers during the
April-to-October growing season, when drug lords cultivate pot on an
agribusiness-scale fit for the Central Valley.

"It's so big that we have to focus our resources on one or two areas at a
time, because otherwise it's beyond our scope," says Sequoia's lone special
agent assigned to the marijuana war, who, for his own safety, can't be
identified.

He and two seasonal employees face an army of growers who turn expanses of
land set aside as untouched wilderness into contraband cropland. "In a
national park everything is protected," notes the agent. "You're not even
supposed to take a pine cone. It's beyond what should be acceptable in
today's society."

So far, park visitors and the growers rarely cross paths; the pot farms are
in areas with little public appeal - remote slopes at lower, hotter
elevations. However, officials report five encounters between gun-wielding
growers and visitors on national forest lands in California this year.

The growers poach wildlife, spill pesticides, divert water from streams and
dump tons of trash. Yet enforcement lags. Rangers say they lack helicopters
and manpower, and elected officials have other priorities, including
homeland security and fighting drug cartels in South and Central America.

In the last year, 100,000 marijuana plants have been removed from
California national parks, including 44,000 from Sequoia. Cannabis
operations are even more widespread in national forests and on BLM lands,
where more than 500,000 plants were yanked last year. Pot busts on public
lands in California have skyrocketed from an average of a couple of hundred
plants per seizure a few years ago to an average of 3,500 today.

"I've had meetings with law enforcement throughout the state, and everybody
just sits there with their mouths open. Nobody can believe this has
happened on the scale that it has," says William Ruzzamenti, a 30-year Drug
Enforcement Administration official who heads up the Central Valley
High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a program that spearheads drug
investigations and has provided support to Sequoia and Kings Canyon.

Pot plantations have surged as Mexican-affiliated drug cartels adapt to
increased border security since 9/11 and cash in on the rising price of
high-grade weed, now more profitable than methamphetamine, according to
investigators.

Oddly enough, public outcry has been remarkably muted.

Sequoia Kings Canyon spokesperson Alexandra Picavet thinks the drug debate
has kept the problem from getting traction. "People get blinded by the
marijuana issue . We don't want people planting asparagus on the land,
either. This is agricultural assault on a national park, no matter what
they're growing."

Lawmakers say the issue is crowded out by more pressing matters. This
year's federal drug-control strategy did not address pot cultivation on
public land. And the Sierra Club acknowledges other priorities than drug
bandits.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), whose district includes Sequoia National Park,
called hearings on the marijuana incursion in 2003. He says the issue is
under the radar for most lawmakers in Washington.

"They don't even know that it exists . People don't think about it," Nunes
says.

The pot growers are no longer the stereotype of hapless hippies. They are
part of sophisticated criminal organizations schooled on the Colombian
cartels' economy of scale, says Ruzzamenti. "They do things big. Even if
you lose a little here, you'll make it up in the long run. They've taken
this lesson to another level," he says.

Most of the ringleaders, say investigators, are U.S. nationals based in
Southern California with connections to cartel families in Michoacan,
Mexico; field workers are well-armed Mexican laborers.

"We've found AR-15s, shotguns, rifles, knives strapped to poles, crude
crossbows," says J.D. Swed, chief ranger at Sequoia.

Ruzzamenti first learned of the cannabis boom two years ago when his
office, set up to combat the Central Valley's rampant meth activity, saw a
plunge in the number of meth labs. Busted lab operators told him that
business was down in the summer because many of the workers were planting
marijuana in the forest, where they could earn up to $200 a day.
Authorities were at first incredulous that the lowly weed could have
eclipsed meth for profitability. Then they began uncovering giant farms,
such as a 79,000-plant haul in Tulare County valued at $360 million.

The cartels dispatch their troops down isolated roads in steep terrain in
February and March. Growers bushwhack a couple of miles into the woods,
carrying 25-pound tanks of propane, 50-pound sacks of fertilizer,
pesticides and hoes. Periodic food drops supplement poached animals. The
farmers clear the understory of foliage, leaving a canopy for camouflage;
they cut terraces in the slopes, run irrigation hoses from creeks and
rivers for miles and carve out a sprawling camp. For every five acres of
marijuana, a grower will develop 180 acres of wilderness.

When Sequoia restoration ecologist Athena Demetry heard about the
"gardens," she thought, "How bad could it be? Then you see entire slopes
covered with this. They'll put up tarps, have cooking areas, make tables
out of branches. You walk down the trail and see more and more [camps]. You
know you're just seeing the edge of the problem."

Last February Demetry got enough funding to rehabilitate pot zones for the
first time. With a team from the California Conservation Corps, she
restored 25 garbage pits for 50 gardens and 13 camps in an area on the east
fork of the Kaweah. She found pesticides in one creek. Now growers are
moving deeper into the backcountry, making it harder to get restoration
crews in safely. Demetry has half the budget she had last year.

To dent the pot tide Park Service officials installed a gate at the
entrance to Mineral King Road, making it harder for growers to reach
favorite haunts. The park's special agent has submitted a request for 10
law enforcement agents, for 24-hour surveillance.

But what Sequoia officials say they really need are helicopters. Last year
the special agent had access to a Black Hawk helicopter unit out of
Riverside through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection program, but it
was reassigned to the Mexican border this year. "The Black Hawk unit really
worked," he says. "We discovered three major gardens with it."

The U.S. government has sent 60 helicopters and about $4 billion to
Colombia since 2000 to eradicate coca farms, causing Rep. George P.
Radanovich (R-Mariposa) to note that "it does make you wonder why we're
going all the way down there . We may have to rethink it and beef up our
attempts in the forests and national parks."

The special agent at Sequoia National Park says he needs another $200,000
annually for Operation No Grow, a five-year plan to eradicate marijuana
farms in the park. Sequoia did get an additional $45,000 this year, but
officials say it's not nearly enough.

Two weeks ago, Sen. Dianne Feinstein released a letter, signed by
Radanovich, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) and Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm
Springs), calling on National Park Service Director Fran Mainella to
increase law enforcement to stem cultivation in the parks, estimate damage
by growers and come up with a plan to restore affected areas.

In the meantime, with federal budgets allocated for the year, Sequoia
officials prepare for another season of raids as deep in former wilderness
untold numbers of growers hope for a bumper harvest.