7,000 POT PLANTS SEIZED

Authorities Raid A Farm In The Los Padres National Forest North Of Ojai
After Growers Shot At A Hunter Last Week. No Arrests Made.

Four days after marijuana growers shot at a hunter in the Ventura County
backcountry, a team of narcotics officers swept into a rugged mountain
canyon Tuesday and seized at least 7,000 mature plants. It was the fourth -
and largest - pot farm destroyed by county law enforcement in the past
month and brings the total number of marijuana plants cut down this season
to more than 15,960. Those plants would be worth as much as $48 million on
the street, authorities said, making marijuana the county's sixth-most
valuable cash crop, directly behind avocados and celery.

Marijuana cultivation in the brush-covered wilderness that covers most of
Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties has been a chronic
problem over the past decade but has taken a dangerous turn this season.
Last weekend, a hunter walking near a marijuana grove in Los Padres
National Forest north of Ojai was fired upon by three men wielding
automatic weapons.

Authorities said the hunter encountered two more armed men as he left the
area. Ventura County narcotics, K-9 and SWAT team officers joined by U.S.
Forest Service agents dropped into the grove, about 13 miles north of Ojai,
by helicopter early Tuesday morning and found a hastily abandoned
encampment along Bear Creek. Sheriff's spokesman Eric Nishimoto said it
appeared the pot growers fled shortly before the raid, leaving behind a
pair of boots and chicken frying in a skillet.

Deputies also found piles of garbage, pesticides and black plastic
irrigation piping. Nishimoto said growers had dammed up the creek and were
using it to irrigate the grove. The marijuana plants were chopped down,
airlifted and burned at a command post off Rose Valley Road. No suspects
were apprehended, and county and federal officials said the search would
continue into this morning. "A lot of times these suspects will hide, they
will hunker down until they think we are gone," said Ray Gould, senior law
enforcement officer for the vast Los Padres National Forest, which
stretches from Ojai to Monterey. In a separate raid Tuesday, San Luis
Obispo County sheriff's deputies were fired upon after hiking through rough
terrain into a clearing thick with marijuana plants.

At least five men fled through the brush, but officers caught the suspected
shooter, said Sgt. Pete Hodgkin. The deputies stayed to cut the plants,
which were taken out of the forest by helicopter. Nobody was injured in the
incident, which took place about five miles from Lopez Lake outside the
city of Arroyo Grande, Hodgkin said. Armed attacks by marijuana growers are
an ominous new development, said Kathy Good, a Forest Service spokeswoman
based at Los Padres National Forest headquarters in Goleta. "We know
they're not little hobbits out there," she said. "I'm concerned for the
safety of the public and of Forest Service employees." Last month, a police
officer on a trail in Los Padres' Santa Barbara district had a run-in with
a camouflaged bear trap that presumably had been set by a marijuana grower,
Good said. The trap, which had been tied down with metal cables, snapped
shut on the thick heel of the officer's boot. Good said the problem of
illicit marijuana cultivation appears to be on the rise. Last year, some
47,000 marijuana plants and 20 large-scale "gardens" were destroyed in Los
Padres. "I'm sure we'll break that record this summer," Good said. John
Bridgewater, who manages the Ojai district of the forest, said pot farms
posed a danger to wildlife as well as to hikers and hunters. The pot farm
raided Tuesday lies in a streambed that is home to threatened fish, plants,
amphibians and birds, including the California condor.

Bridgewater said the use of pesticides, the destruction of vegetation and
relocation of streams poses a significant risk to those species. "This is a
classic problem for the national forest this time of year," he said.
"Typically, these are very fragile areas for wildlife."

And it is very difficult to determine who is responsible, authorities said,
although they suspect Mexican drug cartels are involved. Dressed in
camouflage with a gun at his side, senior enforcement officer Gould
surveyed the Ojai-area eradication effort at midday Tuesday as thumping
helicopters dropped bundles of leafy green plants onto a flatbed truck
headed for a smoldering fire.

The plants were first spotted three months ago during a joint surveillance
operation with the U.S. Army. Gould said the military helped the Forest
Service by letting his crew ride along on nine Blackhawk helicopters as an
Alaska-based unit conducted a training exercise over the California forest.
But Gould, whose six-person team is responsible for patrolling 2 million
acres of forestland, says he knows the seizures are only the tip of the
iceberg. "I don't think we are getting even half of it," he said of the
marijuana likely being cultivated in the national forest. "The best we can
hope for is that we get lucky and trace them back to a cartel."

Last week, narcotics officers from the Ventura County Sheriff's Department,
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Oxnard and Ventura police
departments ended a joint investigation with the arrests of two men and the
seizure of at least 4,400 marijuana plants growing in a coastal canyon near
Ventura.

The investigation began when a sheriff's pilot spotted the plants in Padre
Juan Canyon during a routine helicopter flight. Detectives began
surveillance of the area and on Sept. 8 spotted a vehicle driving into the
canyon and a man, identified as Jesus Jaquez, 20, of Lynwood, walking into
the grove. Detectives watched as Jaquez stashed containers of food at the
site, then arrested him and the driver of the vehicle, Gabino Mejia, 21, of
Ventura, on suspicion of conspiracy to grow marijuana, authorities said. No
additional suspects were located, although detectives found an campsite
with several sleeping bags, camping gear, food, pesticides, rodent poison
and three rifles.

On Sept. 6, sheriff's deputies raided a marijuana farm in Thousand Oaks and
seized 760 plants.

An August raid in a county portion of the Santa Monica Mountains netted
3,800 plants.

"We certainly are finding more plants that we did last year," said
Nishimoto, attributing some of the growth to late rains and good growing
conditions.

He echoed Gould's worries about how much of the drug is still out there.
"We do as much as we can," Nishimoto said, "but we are just barely
scratching the surface."