A BUMPER YEAR FOR POT

Mexican Cartels Shifting Plantations To Southern Sierra

Increasingly controlled by a handful of Mexican drug cartels, California's
billion-dollar wilderness marijuana industry has shifted from the Emerald
Triangle in the north to the southern Sierra Nevada, according to federal
and state law enforcement officials.

And after a record year last year, officials are gearing up for another
bumper crop both in production and seizures this year. The highly valued
California-grown pot is literally as valuable as gold, selling today for
about the same price as the metal, at around $4,200 a pound.

Not only is the illicit marijuana industry a major crime problem --
authorities say the Mexican cartels are using profits from their illegal
methamphetamine operations to finance expanding pot farms in California and
elsewhere -- officials say it poses serious threats to the wilderness
ecology and to people using California's and the nation's backcountry.

"This is a really serious problem," said Jerry Moore, regional law
enforcement director for the U.S. Forest Service. "And it's a problem that
has spread all over the state."

He said the most serious change in the shadow industry is the inroads made
by Mexican drug organizations.

"We think we have at least two organizations working here in California,
maybe more," Moore said.

Intelligence sources have information that the cartels have divided up
territories, with some operating in California and on mostly federal lands
elsewhere, including in the Appalachians in the East.

"There's still a number of people growing marijuana for commercial use who
have been involved for more than 20 years, mainly in the north, but these
organized groups have pretty much taken over," Moore said.

That means bigger operations and bigger problems for law enforcement.

"The days of a hippie growing a few plants in the woods are pretty much
over," said Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes. "What's taken over are large,

organized cartels, many originating in Mexico, that grow up to 10,000 or
more (plants) in a plantation."

Authorities said the center of the industry has spread from its old base in
Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties -- the so-called Emerald Triangle
- -- into the Sierra foothills and mountains from Calaveras to Kern County.

Indeed, more than half of the 345,207 marijuana plants seized last year by
California's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) were in the Central
Valley and Sierra foothills.

Kern County, which includes remote wilderness areas in the Sequoia National
Forest, has become a favorite of pot farmers -- it led CAMP seizures with
59, 015 plants.

Nearly half of California's counties had pot gardens raided by local and
state authorities last year and federal authorities said there were raids
in all of the state's 18 national forests. The national forests cover 20
million acres, one-fifth of California.

Moore said there are huge problems with wilderness marijuana plantations in
Tulare and Tehama counties, that the sophisticated growing operations have
spread into the Angeles, Los Padres and San Bernardino national forests.

"Those areas are not traditionally big garden areas," Moore said.

A 60,000-plant operation was busted in Sequoia National Forest last year
and Moore said several 5,000-to-7,000-plant gardens have already been found
in Cleveland National Forest, primarily in San Diego and Orange counties,
this year.

The exact size of California's marijuana crop is impossible to determine,
but judging from last year's record seizures, it ranks up there with
tourism and agriculture as one of the state's major industries.

Comprehensive figures are difficult to determine because of interagency
overlap, but last year, the attorney general's CAMP program claimed its
345, 207 marijuana plants seized were 43 percent more than the previous
record set in 1999. The retail value of the plants -- 203,964 from public
lands and 141, 243 from private lands -- was estimated at $1.3 billion.

The Forest Service said 440,000 plants were seized on national forest lands.

In fact, that figure may have been 100,000 plants or so higher because of
eradication efforts by sheriff's departments or the state, Moore said.

CAMP seized 59,015 plants in Kern County but Kern and other counties seized
even more in local raids. Tulare County Sheriff's Lt. Greg Wright, for
instance, said his agency alone eradicated 60,000 plants with an estimated
value of $180 million.

The wilderness pot farms are labor-intensive operations, requiring growers
to pack in all their equipment, to maintain caretakers and guards at the
site during the growing season and to walk in bigger crews for the planting
and harvesting.

They leave more than footprints.

"One of the worst things about the plantations is the environmental
degradation the growers wreak on the national forests," the Forest
Service's Mathes said.

Moreover, authorities said, the forest pot farms pose a danger to the
public using the woods.

"It's an incredibly valuable crop," Mathes said, "and these people are
generally armed. That poses some risk to forest visitors, like you and me.
Fortunately, they generally plant in out-of-the-way places."