FULL COURT PRESS IN FOREST NEEDED

Our view: Squatters steal public land, then ruin it while they grow
their cash crop. They need to be rousted so that people can use their
national forests.

People can argue all they want about whether marijuana should be
legalized - and they will - but nobody can deny the environmental
damage and unjustifiable commandeering of public land by some pot growers.

That's why we're strongly in support of the so-called "Operation Full
Court Press" effort to eradicate illegal marijuana plantations on
public land in six north state counties.

About 300 law enforcement personnel from 25 federal, state and local
agencies have been sweeping public lands for three weeks, with at
least another week left in the operation.

It has resulted in some staggering numbers as of last week: 102
arrests, 462,549 plants uprooted and destroyed, and a reported street
value of $928 million for the plants that were destroyed.

Operation Full Court Press shouldn't be confused with the medical
marijuana issue. This has little to do with medical marijuana.
Proposition 215 growers are private individuals operating on private
lands.

The ones targeted here are huge, sophisticated operations on public
lands - lightly visited national forest property with abundant water
and good soil. The north state has that in abundance.

Law enforcement agencies say most of the plantations on public lands
are run by Mexican drug cartels. They hire tight-lipped operators to
grow the pot and live in hiding for a few months, till it's time to
harvest.

Law enforcement, however, spends months gathering intelligence and
looking at places where the pot is likely to be grown. They look for
remote areas that have few visitors but also have a road nearby for
resupplying the gardeners, and abundant water.

The marijuana eradicators have gotten better about catching the
growers. Sometimes they're tipped off by flyovers. Sometimes they're
tipped off by an alert citizen reporting suspicious activity - like a
car loaded with irrigation pipe on a remote mountain road. But usually
tenacity and the knowledge of where the gardens are likely to be is
enough to doom it.

Mexican cartels came to California to grow marijuana because it is
easy. Or was easy. We hope that after 102 arrests and nearly a
half-million plants seized, they'll do the wise thing and move along.

That would be splendid, because the real travesty of squatters
stealing our public land is the way they abuse it. Every garden has
armed thugs who not only are a danger to wildlife such as deer, which
are poached for food, but also to hikers, hunters and off-highway
vehicle riders who are in the forest lawfully.

Operation Full Court Press organizers said last week that 46,000
pounds of trash has been removed from growing camps, 22 miles of black
irrigation lines hauled away and 2,228 pounds of fertilizer,
pesticides and other poisons removed.

These growers not only treat the land with disdain, but they treat
taxpaying citizens who own the land in the same fashion. We want our
forests back. Operation Full Court Press is a start in that direction.