HOUSE PANEL GOES TO SCENE OF THE CRIME

WASHINGTON -- A record haul of marijuana plants in rural Tulare County has
set the stage for a congressional investigation due to pay a visit to the
Sierra Nevada on Friday.

By convening a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing in Sequoia
National Park, lawmakers hope for a ground-level view of illicit drug
production on public lands.

In a stroke of political fortune, the previously scheduled hearing date
comes just days after authorities discovered an elaborate marijuana garden
east of Porterville.

While the recent bust occurred on the Tule River Indian Reservation,
officials say it illustrates a larger drug production problem frequenting
remote stretches of national forests, national parks and other public
property. The land is open, and the pot is proliferating.

"Back in the early 1980s, and up until recent times, it was local folks
doing it," Al Delacruz, a National Park Service special agent at Sequoia
and Kings Canyon national parks, said Tuesday. "But they've been totally
displaced by the Mexican national cartels."

In California alone last year, law enforcement officers seized more than
420,000 marijuana plants on national forests.

More than 90,000 additional marijuana plants were reported taken down from
other Interior Department lands in California. Illicit methamphetamine labs
are likewise infiltrating the state's public lands.

No one thinks the numbers capture the entire problem.

"Anecdotal evidence suggests that, at best, federal law enforcement
officials identify about one-third to one-half of the marijuana cultivation
sites," a congressional memo notes.

"Similarly, locating meth labs is difficult, given the mobility of meth
production."

The memo from the House Government Reform Committee lays the foundation for
Friday's scheduled hearing. Two subcommittees overseeing natural resources
and drug policy are due to take part.

The hearing is expected to give park and forest managers, as well as local,
state and federal law enforcement officials, a chance to spotlight specific
California problems.

Officials began seeing these upward trends well before the recent Tulare
County seizure of more than 72,000 high-grade marijuana plants.

Park spokeswoman Alex Picavet said border control measures imposed after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks may have further driven Mexican-based
drug gangs to move their production to U.S. public lands.

But the Interior Department also has made changes since the terrorist
attacks, boosting law enforcement efforts with increased staffing and a new
administrative post for law enforcement and security.

The Forest Service, which manages three times as many acres in California
as the National Park Service , has encountered similar drug problems. In
June, for example, authorities removed an estimated 40,000 opium poppies
from a hillside in the Sierra National Forest.

Friday's hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. at Wuksachi Village and
Lodge, 64740 Wuksachi Way, in Sequoia National Park.