STATE POT FARMS ON MOVE

Mexican Cartels Plant In Southern Sierra, Cops Say.

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 following 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 is pretty much
over, " said Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes. "What's taken over
is 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 59 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
inter-agency 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.

The plots are generally planted on steep slopes above wilderness
rivers, some of them designated wild and scenic.

"They cut away the native vegetation and put in a lot of fertilizer,"
Mathes said. "They use excessive amounts of herbicides, pesticides and
rodenticides to keep away competing vegetation and to kill animals
that feed on the plants, like wood rats. Wood rats happen to be the
favorite food of the Northern and California spotted owls, species
that already are in trouble.

"All these poisons end up getting washed into the rivers the following
winter. They're also not very good housekeepers. These sites are
strewn with trash and human waste."

The growers also drain nearby creeks for their elaborate drip watering
systems. "They pretty much suck a little creek dry to water their
plantation," Mathes said.

"These people don't have any respect for the environment," added
Moore. "They don't really care that their poisons get into the
watershed or affect some of these natural ecosystems."

Moreover, authorities noted, 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."

Moore urged hikers, hunters and fishermen going into remote and
sparsely populated wilderness areas to check with local rangers and
other authorities about possible marijuana operations.

If one encounters a grower or a garden in the wild, he said, "get out
of there as fast as you can and report it to your local forest office."

Coping with the well-financed, profitable and mobile cartel operations
is increasingly difficult for budget-strained law enforcement
agencies. "We're always kind of behind the eight ball," Moore said.

He said anti-pot activities have had to be funded out of his regular
law enforcement budget "which has been woefully inadequate to mount a
real effective drug enforcement effort."