Marijuana garden

By Eric Brazil
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

BELL SPRING, Mendocino County This is about as far away as you can get
in California: 93 miles northeast of Ukiah the last 20 miles on dirt
through the Eel River's middle fork drainage then down a thousand feet
through dense, trailless forest. Cell phones and radios don't work here.
There are no backpackers.

Bell Spring is the perfect place for an outdoor marijuana garden.

On Wednesday morning, nine U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers,
dressed in camouflage and packing sidearms and one AR15 rifle
slipped through the woods into Bell Spring and raided a monster marijuana
garden so ripe that its pungent scent was detectable 100 yards away.

They made a grand haul: 2,351 fully mature, primoquality sinsemilla
plants, several hundred already hung up to dry in the sun, with their thick
buds oozing resin.

The growers got away leaving a fortune behind.

"I'm sure the growers are going to feel bad once they know we have all the
dope," said Frank Packwood, law enforcement chief for the Forest Service in
northwest California. "I'll bet their tears are causing erosion."

Estimated street value of the marijuana that was cut, bundled and
helicoptered out to be incinerated is between $6 million and $9 million.

The twoacre garden, watered by plastic irrigation lines from a nameless
nearby creek, fits the mold for outlaw growing remote, overlooked public
land lightly managed by the Forest Service. If a deer hunter hadn't
stumbled across it last week, the harvest would be nearly complete,
Packwood said.

It is situated amid a mixed stand of coast live oak, ponderosa pine and
madrone on a relatively level patch of ground near the border of Mendocino
and Trinity counties, where Mendocino National Forest meets the Yolla Bolly
Wilderness Area.

Packwood, who has been investigating marijuana growing and crimes for the
Forest Service since 1979, said the garden was the handiwork of a real pro.

"It's one of the most meticulous I've ever seen," he said. "Usually the
growers leave fertilizer sacks and all sorts of trash behind."

Most of the plants not hung up to dry were flourishing in black plastic
grow bags, each fed by a drip irrigation line. Packwood noted that each
line was secured to the grow bag by duct tape "to keep the animals from
pulling it out. This wasn't any firstyear grower."

Seven water timers were found in the garden along with one oscillating
sprinkler painted in camouflage.

While the growers adhered to model marijuana cultivation practices, they
trashed the forest, which is in a scenic river corridor, by cutting down
about two dozen live oaks to permit sunlight to reach the budheavy, six
to eightfoot plants.

Because the leaves of live oak and marijuana are nearly the same color,
leaving the former as a canopy for the latter makes marijuana gardens hard
to detect from the air.

Forest Service law enforcement agents have had the garden under
surveillance since Friday, hoping to catch one or more of the growers. But
by Tuesday night they concluded that something spooked their targets,
hence, Wednesday's raid.

Agents still aren't quite sure what tipped off the growers, although they
have a hunch that one of their unmarked vehicles may have been spotted near
an old logging trail that was one of the access trails to the garden.

The agents, whose jurisdiction encompasses the national forests and cases
that start in the forests, were disappointed at the failure to make
arrests.

"Our push is to make arrests, to make cases," said Pat Lyng, the Forest
Service's assistant regional special agent for law enforcement in
California. "This was such a near thing. Our people are the best there is
when it comes to sniffing around and finding stuff."

Nevertheless, "it's a good day's work that we got that many plants out
there," said Special Agent Jerry Price of Klamath National Forest.

"Sometimes you get chickens, sometimes chicken feathers," said J.W.
Allendorf, law enforcement supervisor for Six Rivers National Forest.

The passage of Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana in
California, seems to have produced the predicted increase in marijuana
production at least in part because growers figure that the initiative
may be used as a defense if they're caught.

Forest Service agents say the size and number of marijuana gardens have
increased since Prop. 215 passed. In recent years, a 2,000plant garden was
a rarity, but this year several that size have been raided already.

The expansion of marijuana acreage occurs at a time when the Forest
Service's law enforcement cadre has shrunk about 25 percent from a high of
200 in the 1980s. At the same time, growers are showing adaptability,
mobility and craftiness in siting and hiding their gardens.

Shutting down the industry "is like trying to squeeze mercury," Allendorf
said.