OUR PUBLIC PARKS UNDER THE GUN

Illegal Marijuana Farms Threaten The Environment And The Public's Safety

SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, CALIF. - Even Brer Rabbit couldn't make it through
this briar patch. With their M-16 rifles and their backpacks snagging on
every bramble, three national park rangers in commando gear spit out
mosquitoes on a pathless mountainside of manzanita thickets and dense
brush. Gun barrels raised to give each other cover, they advance using hand
signals, pausing only to sip water in the 100-degree heat and gasp for air
through mesh masks.

After 2-1/2 hours, one mile and a thousand-foot gain in altitude, they come
across evidence of large-scale activity that officials call the biggest
threat to national parks since their creation over a century ago.

Beside an abandoned camp scattered with trash and human waste lie empty
bags of fertilizer, gardening tools, irrigation tubing -- and spent rifle
casings. Illegal marijuana farming, once the province of small-time
growers, has become big business on the nation's most visited public land:
national parks.

"This is massive-scale agriculture that is threatening the very mission of
the national parks, which is to preserve the natural environment in
perpetuity and provide for safe public recreation," says Bill Tweed, chief
naturalist at Sequoia National Park.

"(Growers) are killing wildlife, diverting streams, introducing nonnative
plants, creating fire and pollution hazards, and bringing the specter of
violence. For the moment, we are failing both parts of our mission, and
that is tragic."

For decades, park rangers have stumbled into small cannabis stands. But
now, desperation and opportunity have combined to move larger-scale illicit
marijuana farming to Sequoia, Glacier, Big Bend, and other jewels of the
American landscape.

'The specter of violence'

Since the late 1990s, marijuana cultivation has escalated dramatically in
the more remote public areas such as national forests -- many of which
permit mining, forestry, grazing, and other activities -- and areas under
the stewardship of the Bureau of Land Management. Marijuana seizure in
California national forests has jumped tenfold, from 45,054 plants in 1994
to 495,000 plants last year.But since Sept. 11, drug farming has
increasingly spread from remote forests to more-public national parks.
Tighter security on U.S. borders has raised the incentive for domestic
cultivation. That makes for more armed growers -- and potential clashes
with those traipsing into the wilderness for nature at its most pristine.

As well as growing more common, the enterprise has become more organized.
International drug cartels -- made up largely of Mexican nationals -- seem
especially drawn to the bounty. And their harvests can be huge: Last year,
officials here seized the biggest stash of all, with 34,000 plants in five
locations at an estimated street value of $140 million.

Complicating the task for law enforcement is the strain on resources. Park
budgets have tightened, and many of the available rangers have been shifted
to more popular haunts.

"The most (visitors) used to worry about is running into a grizzly bear.
Now there is the specter of violence by a masked alien toting an AK-47,"
says David Barna, chief spokesman for the National Park Service.

Barna and others say the problem is national, but most pronounced in
California, Utah, and Arkansas, and in parks with international borders
such as Big Bend in Texas and Glacier in Montana.

In California, the biggest problems have been at Sequoia, Whiskeytown
National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore. Officials say
the accouterments of cannabis farming -- black tubing, drip-irrigation
techniques, terraced gardens, booby traps, look-out posts and weapons --
are so similar across the plots that the same organizations are probably at
work.

"Intelligence gathering ... up and down the state suggests these are the
same groups expanding their operations into different areas," says Steve
Prokop of Whiskeytown, near Mount Shasta.

Sequoia officials began concerted efforts to comb remote areas in 2001,
when a fisherman reported meeting masked operatives toting automatic
rifles. Since then, officials have discovered five camps and several acres
of marijuana stalks, typically in areas with natural water sources.

Last year, officials destroyed eight tons of crops and counted thousands of
plants that had already been harvested -- and they surmise that many other
plots exist undetected. Eight Mexican nationals are due for trial in September.

A heavy toll, an arduous task

For years, drug enforcement in national parks was focused on scouting out
methamphetamine labs. Marijuana gardens were few in comparison and were
rarely large-scale enterprises, according to Holly Bundock, chief Park
Service spokeswoman for California.

"We used to find smaller gardens every once in a while, but what is going
on now is far more organized," says Al DeLaCruz, chief criminal
investigator for Sequoia. "The impact (on) resources is very dramatic in
terms of the refuse left behind -- the damage to vegetation, soil and water."

Besides clearing trees and brush to plant marijuana, growers often terrace
the land, stirring up soil and attracting plants that wouldn't otherwise
take hold. Officials fear those exotic newcomers and the havoc they could
wreak, reminiscent of an influx of star thistle on California ranch land
that rendered millions of acres useless.

The diversion of water also can debilitate wildlife, especially in the dry
season when many species come from far afield for summer's paltry trickles.
Without water, animals migrate elsewhere or die. And fertilizer in water is
a major problem. When polluted runoff flows into lakes and streams, varying
nitrate levels can kill fish species, launching a domino effect on the food
chain.

"We have found evidence of insecticide contaminating groundwater, which can
be devastating," says Colin Smith, a ranger at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Beyond agriculture's toll, there's the wear and tear of humans fending for
themselves. DeLaCruz and others have found the remains of deer and bear
that growers killed for food and of snakes and rodents they killed for sport.

To rangers, the most galling part of the story is that the National Park
backcountry where marijuana is cultivated is designated wilderness by the
1964 Wilderness Act. Unlike the portions of national parks with campsites,
roads and restrooms, such areas are supposed to "retain their primeval
character," preserve solitude and keep man's imprint unnoticeable. Even
rangers can't use saws or other motorized tools here. Regulations forbid
clearing brush for campsites or fires, and guns are prohibited.

"Wilderness Designation is the highest possible protection for land under
U.S. law," Bundock says.

A hike through dense underbrush to the most accessible of the illicit camps
gives a taste of how hard it is for growers to haul food and equipment. The
sites are so remote, in fact, that harvests often must be helicoptered out.

Besides ammunition and guns, there are tents, cooking utensils, propane
cylinders, and stacked 50-pound bags of fertilizer. Though a 10- to 15-foot
canopy of dense trees conceals the camps' whereabouts, growers take the
added precaution of camouflage tarps.

One ranger, who asked to remain anonymous, marveled at "how impossible this
is to find from above. There is no other way to find [it] except on foot.
And we don't have the staff or resources to ... scour these regions."

Rangers say that cartels hire illegal immigrants to work and live in the
camps, probably for months on end. They use public roads to access parks by
night, scurry into the underbrush with supplies and lug goods up steep
hillsides by moonlight.

Security, strategies and solutions

One advantage for authorities is that they believe marijuana grows best at
elevations of 3,000 to 5,000 feet, eliminating most of the park's 15
million acres as optimal sites. Still, that leaves 100 square miles to
monitor in Sequoia."Law enforcement is spread thin already," Barna says.
Parks and memorials nationwide are transferring 200 rangers -- mostly from
Western parks -- to help meet the general security demands of the summer
surge in tourism. Nor does policing the park system come cheaply: The
recent terror-alert switch from Code Yellow to Code Orange cost the Park
Service $63,500 a day.

Forces left behind are stretched ever thinner.

DeLaCruz says he spends a significant portion of his time on the marijuana
battle, and two rangers accompanying him on a recent day say their time for
other duties, from search and rescue to interpretive work, is dwindling.

"There are people all over the park who want to find a ranger for all the
usual reasons, from historical questions to what kind of flora and fauna
they are seeing," one says. "It's sad that we are frequently out of sight
for them, because we're off chasing marijuana growers."

Given the growth of marijuana farming in national parks over the past
decade, officials fear the problem will worsen before it improves.

"The whole trend is that these groups are moving around more and (heading)
to areas which are more populated," says Laura Mark, a forest service
agent. "They are going after public land meant for families, where they
threaten people and cause untold damage. And they don't care because they
are making more money than (most) will see in a lifetime."

Marijuana growers keep themselves heavily armed, partly out of worry about
rival growers and partly because the street value of marijuana can be so
high. Several shootouts have erupted between growers and law enforcement.

A hunter and son were shot in El Dorado County recently, and a hunter was
killed two years ago in Butte County. Last year, officers were shot in
Tehama and Glenn counties in the Central Valley. "One of our primary
concerns is for our employees," says Sequoia's Tweed.

Officials say public exposure is one of the only solutions. They hope more
people will pressure lawmakers for funding and personnel to stop covert
cultivation, in part so that perpetrators' fears of capture might curtail
the activity.

Although park officials are reluctant to reveal the number of staff
assigned to ferret out marijuana, estimates at Sequoia are in the dozens.
For the clearing of debris and plants, the Park Service has had to rely on
other organizations, from the National Guard to the California Highway
Patrol to the Tehama County Sheriff, using up to 60 people per operation.

"This is everyone's problem," Tweed says. "It's not just a question of the
moral and legal issue of marijuana. It's an issue of commercial-sized
agriculture devastating the mission of national parks to preserve land ...
for generations.

Carolinas Impact

About 2,000 marijuana plants have been seized so far this year in the N.C.
national forests, mostly north and west of Asheville, said Tami Ferrier, a
southeastern patrol commander for the U.S. Forest Service. National forests
in Western North Carolina cover about 1 million acres.

"The (numbers) trend has been about the same, but they're growing better
quality, and they're going to more remote areas that are harder for us to
find," Ferrier said. No arrests have been made this year, she said. Most
marijuana gardens appear to be the work of local growers.

Investigators in the half-million-acre Great Smoky Mountains National Park
have pulled up about 100 plants this year, said spokesman Bob Miller, with
slightly more than half on the park's N.C. side. The heavily forested park
straddles the N.C.-Tennessee line.

The Forest Service and the National Park Service collaborate with state
authorities in aerial searches for marijuana gardens.

While marijuana seizures are stable or declining, federal-land authorities
are uncovering growing numbers of illegal methamphetamine labs in North
Carolina. The Forest Service discovered 15 last year and has bagged at
least five more this year, with two arrests. Three or four labs have been
found in the Smokies park in the past couple of years.