SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK BECOMES A BATTLEFIELD IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

LOS ANGELES -- Famed for having the biggest trees in the world,
Sequoia National Park is now number one in another flora department:
marijuana growing, with more land carved up by pot growers than any
other park. Parts of Sequoia, including the Kaweah River drainage and
areas off Mineral King Road, are no-go zones for visitors and park
rangers during the April-to-October growing season, when drug lords
cultivate pot on an agribusiness-scale fit for California's Central
Valley. ''It's so big that we have to focus our resources on one or
two areas at a time, because otherwise it's beyond our scope," says
Sequoia's lone special agent assigned to the marijuana war, who, for
his own safety, cannot be identified.

He and two seasonal employees face an army of growers who turn
expanses of land set aside as untouched wilderness into contraband
cropland. ''In a national park, everything is protected," notes the
agent. ''You're not even supposed to take a pine cone. It's beyond
what should be acceptable in today's society." So far, park visitors
and the growers rarely cross paths; the pot farms are in areas with
little public appeal -- remote slopes at lower, hotter elevations.
Officials, however, have reported five encounters between gun-wielding
growers and visitors on national forest lands in California this
year. The growers poach wildlife, spill pesticides, divert water from
streams, and dump tons of trash.

Yet enforcement is lagging.

Rangers say they lack helicopters and manpower, and elected officials
have other priorities, including homeland security and fighting drug
cartels in South and Central America. In the last year, 100,000
marijuana plants have been removed from California national parks,
including 44,000 from Sequoia. Cannabis operations are even more
widespread in national forests and on Bureau of Land Management lands,
where more than 500,000 plants were yanked last year. Pot busts on
public lands in California have skyrocketed from an average of a
couple hundred plants per seizure a few years ago to an average of
3,500 today. ''I've had meetings with law enforcement throughout the
state, and everybody just sits there with their mouths open. Nobody
can believe this has happened on the scale that it has," says William
Ruzzamenti, a 30-year Drug Enforcement Administration official who
heads up the Central Valley High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a
program that spearheads drug investigations and has provided support
to Sequoia and Kings Canyon.

Pot plantations have surged as Mexican-affiliated drug cartels adapt
to increased border security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks
and cash in on the rising price of high-grade marijuana, now more
profitable than methamphetamine, according to investigators.

Public outcry has been muted. Sequoia Kings Canyon spokeswoman
Alexandra Picavet says she thinks the drug debate has kept the problem
from getting traction. ''People get blinded by the marijuana issue. .
. . We don't want people planting asparagus on the land, either. This
is agricultural assault on a national park, no matter what they're
growing."

Lawmakers say the issue is crowded out by more pressing
matters.

This year's federal drug-control strategy did not address pot
cultivation on public land. And the Sierra Club acknowledges other
priorities over drug bandits. Representative Devin Nunes, a California
Republican whose district includes Sequoia National Park, called
hearings on the marijuana incursion in 2003. He says the issue is
under the radar for most lawmakers in Washington. ''They don't even
know that it exists," Nunes says.