Editor's note: The following is an unedited release from the National Park Service.
Nearly 3,000 illegal marijuana plants were eradicated from Sequoia National Park in California last month. Law enforcement officers discovered a cultivation site in the Yucca Creek drainage west, which is in a designated wilderness area of Sequoia National Park, west of Generals Highway.
The 2,986 plants were removed on September 14 and had an estimated street value of $7.5 million. No arrests have been made and an investigation is ongoing.
“Illegal marijuana grows like this can wreak havoc on the environment,” explained Ned Kelleher, chief ranger for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. “Trash is left everywhere and herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals accumulate in the watershed. The cultivators poach native wildlife, clear-cut acres of forest, and create unauthorized trails.”
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks this year have seen a five-fold increase in illegal marijuana cultivation over the last five years. So far this year, 21,000 plants with an estimated value of $52 million have been eradicated. And since the early 2000s, when the trend of large scale cultivation operations first began in the parks, approximately 270,000 plants have been eradicated with an estimated street value of $911 million.
Large marijuana cultivation sites can have major impacts on the Central Valley. A single marijuana plant uses six to eight gallons of water a day, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. That deprives water that would otherwise serve communities downstream with drinking water and provides for irrigation of crops. Because a large number of pesticides are used in growing marijuana, the water that does run off from large cultivation sites can be tainted.
The September 2016 operation was completed with the assistance of the California Army National Guard’s Counterdrug Task Force and the United States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California.
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Comments
Build the Wall!
Having been involved in the investigation of these types of DTO grows on public lands in California a border wall would only make the situation worse. The large scale Mexican DTO trespass grows only became a major issue after 9/11 and the resulting increase in border security. When that happened the cartels realized it was easier to grow MJ in the US than try to smuggle it over the border. The climate in California makes it ideal for MJ growing and DTO grows will continue here even if Prop 64 legalizes its recreational use.
Sell it ust the money for the parks.
A previous resident of California (1971-78, 1995), I can assure everyone that pot was being grown in the state's national parks and national forests LONG before 9/11 and the so-called heightened border security that followed. Whole sections of the national forests in particular were being labeled "dangerous" even 25 years ago. If you stumbled on the growers, and they thought you a threat, well, you might just "disappear."
What makes it "easier" to grow marijuana on this side of the border? How about lax enforcement, starting with too few officers in the field? If you want to stop something, you have to be willing to stop it. If every time a "grow" got started it was discovered and rooted out, that would end the problem, would it not? Or do we want marijuana to become like moonshine, and turn the other way?
The point about moonshine is to skirt the law, since alcohol is everywhere a legal product. The point about marijuana is to defy the government, openly turning large portions of the public lands into lawless fiefdoms.
A border wall may not be the answer, but enforcement certainly is. Good luck with that, as they say, especially now that marijuana has been defined as "recreational," in other words, absolutely safe and benign. Just don't ask me where I bought it, or where my money went.
Alfred-I never said MJ wasn't being grown in parks and public lands in California prior to 9/11, I've been an LE park ranger for over 20 years. But in the early to mid 2000s the scale of the operations changed dramatically. Early in my career a big grow in my region, SF Bay Are, would have been a few hundred plants and the growers were locals. By 2005/06 it was thousands to tens of thousands plants being grown by those with connections to Mexican Drug Cartels (DTOs). As for the post 9/11 comment that came from an NPS special agent who worked on nothing but DTO grows on public lands.
Mrnranger, that is my experience also.
I think we should legalize marijuana as Colorado has done. There are rural areas in California, especially in the northwest counties where, fundamentally, it already is, de facto of course. A friend that owns a small farm in Humbolt County told me you run for office there you had better not interfere with the local marijuana farmers. The developing news is the big cartels are now competing with the locals, this causing problems. Tobacco, alcohol, drugs (legal or ortherwise), are a problem here in America and for that matter in many other nations. The war on drugs is simply not working, more enforcement is not going to change anything, it changed nothing during prohibition, just led to more corruption and a larger prison population. I have no answers, but my own opinion is education in the abuse of the above products is extremely important. Also funding for substance abuse centers, big time. Many citizens use alcohol, drugs etc. in moderate amounts, usually not a problem. Like planned parent hood, family planning (sex education), other programs, people need to know the consequences of the choices they make and be able to seek help when they realize they have problem. Out lawing the substance just makes it more desirable and more expensive.
I've read studies from Colorado that stated that the legalization there hasn't exactly curtailed the cartels from growing it in the national forest regions. Their market just is no longer strong in Colorado but bordering states.
The theory is if more states eventually legalize it, one would assume the black market would diminish. Sort of like after prohibition was lifted the black market for bottleggers collapsed as well. I definitely think this is a big threat, and it irritates me that portions of our wilderness and National Park areas are being illegally altered by these cartels. The trash, the pesticides, and all the altering of the land to create irrigation ditches is a definite threat against conserving lands for native species and wildlife. Granted, one must assume many of these grow sites don't exceed a few acres.. But just having toxins and pesticides flush into streams is enough harm.
I know that in the southeast, meth labs setup deep in National Forest areas are also a threat.
I've read a number of articles like this and am curious. Often there is no mention of any arrests only pulling up and destroying the plants. Do they not also arrest the growers and if not why? Is it lack of resources, too dangerous or do these articles just not mention the arrests?
Granted, the so-called War on Drugs has been a failure, as the history of Prohibition indeed forewarned us it would be. It's just that, from where I sit, I see that always used as an excuse. Wild places makes the critical observation that there are not enough arrests. At least keep the cartels off the public lands, right? But no, what began 50 years ago was allowed to spread.
Before the cartels there was my girlfriend's brother-in-law selling pot to Berkeley students. The cartels soon got the idea that the public lands would not be protected from them, either. Why has the spread been so precipitous? Again, think hard on that word "recreational." No word is meant more to deceive us into looking the other way.
Here in Washington State, where pot is legal, the bureaucrats care only about the taxes it will bring. They ask us to pooh-pooh the so-called notion that pot leads eventually to harder drugs. Or national forests invaded by cartels. It's all Mom and Pop to them, nor can we say anything against the good people of Mexico. To liberal Washingtonians, what you call a cartel is just making a living, and what is so wrong with that?
As Sir Walter Scott reminded us, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." The deception here, that pot has no consequences, forever haunts our ability to protect the public. So yes, now that we have deceived ourselves, drugs are overflowing the country. Just put the blame where it belongs--first on the deception itself, and then on the cartels.
Alfred, I doubt the cartels are growing in the Washington National Forests. The legalization has taken out the profitability. But contrary to the predictions the cartels would be eliminated with legalization, they just moved on to more powerful drugs such as meth. Just like Capone didn't go away when Prohibition ended, he just went on to gambling and prostitution. Quite predictable but not what people want to hear. Kind of like the failure of Obamacare.
Lat year I visited a pot dispensary in Denver, not to buy some, but out of curiosity. The young lady showed me some glass jars and gave me the prices. I don't remember the exact cost but it was high and she told me she went through two a day. How she afforded it I cannot imagine and won't speculate as Donald Trump would do. My concern is that the price of legal marijuana is high enough that it will still pay the cartels to grow it illegally on public lands.
I support the legalization of most drugs but am really tired of all the hype over it, but being an ex-smoker have no interest in acquiring another addictive habit. Regarding marijuana in my thousands of mile s of travel in arctic Canada the consensus of medical staf and RCMP was that marijuana resulted in less murder than alcohol.
And from everything I've read the governmental revenues in Colorado have done quite a wonder in paying for schools and other social needs. I never heard much about "make the cartels go away", but I don't live there.
This isn't the place to debate your partisan opinion about the Affordable Care Act. All I know is that I have many friends who previously had no insurance and who now have what has been, in some cases, truly lifesaving insurance benefits. When lives are saved, I say screw the partisan naysayers.
Yeah, $129 million on a state budget of $25 billion. Real boom - not counting the costs. Not that I have any issue with legalization. I just wish it were nation wide at the federal level. Then we wouldn't have all the deadbeat moving to Colorado.
Yes more people have insurance but with deductibles and co pays rising the overwhelming majority have less coverage at a higher price. Meanwhile the whole system is collapsing.
For Siglin
http://www.westword.com/news/why-marijuana-prices-at-colorado-dispensari...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/losing-marijuana-busin...
Thanks for the references EC but why just for me? I said nothing about being anti marijuana, just concern about growing it on public lands which I hope doesn't continue. And as one article implies we better be legalizing heroin and cocaine before it moves onto public lands. If fact let's decriminaiize all drugs including steroids for atheletes. I had a recent head injury that required prednisone for a few days. Wonderful stuff for my mood but they say it will also kill you if taken long term. Let's find a drug that will do the same without the bad effects of prednisone. I should try marjuana as it may be the cure for almost all that plagues the world and we can all be stoned all day long. Being sarcastic a little of course.
My friend Richard Schrock, who is running for Washington State Insurance Commissioner, can tell you all about the Affordable Health Care Act. The problem is: He is running as a Republican, and every liberal newspaper just doesn't want to hear it. In 2017, Baby bar the door. Richard points out that those so-called affordable premiums will jump an average of 67 percent. Many companies are just dropping out. Like any Ponzi Scheme, it worked at first. Now there are too many sick people and too few healthy people (and too few middle-class taxpayers) to keep the experiment afloat.
But yes, we were talking about marijuana. Again, that is what the politicians always say. Look at the schools we are building! I recall when the same argument was used establishing the Washington State Lottery. Now? Those poor people lining up every week to buy tickets are the ones "investing" in our schools the most.
We kids ourselves that "something for nothing" gets us anywhere, but yes, Americans relish being fooled. It's so much easier than having to think about the consequences of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Okay, say we could rob Warren Buffett first--and only the Warren Buffetts. It wouldn't support the country for more than a couple months.
Everything we hold dear was built by the middle class. And now we are being told we are "selfish" for having worked so hard. We are told to look the other way about everything and see only the good that comes from being generous. Gosh, if we legalize marijuana, too, just think of the schools we can build!
In reality, all of those new tax dollars are going to expand the bureaucracy that keeps insisting we are selfish rubes. And because of those taxes, exactly right--illegal marijuana remains far cheaper, and none of those cartels is about to go away.
If I were president, I would send in the National Guard and remove every grow from the public lands. But that's an old Theodore Roosevelt New Yorker talking. Today, we prefer only talk and never action.
Enforcement? Another bureaucracy that never wants to solve the problem. They get paid chasing it around. Like the police we never see anymore in Seattle, now too busy pulling the gangs apart. A traffic stop? You can't be serious! We have much more important things to do!
Then do them, but just don't tell this citizen that looking the other way ever works. Now, where was that lottery ticket I bought last night? At 267 million to one odds, this poor sucker just might have won!
If was for you because they were addressing 2 of your comments. One, that the price was high so people would still buy illegal pot. May have been the case when first legalized but Adams Smith's invisible hand has worked its magic (as it always does) and the price has dropped dramatically making illegal supplies unattractive. The second points to the fact that the cartels haven't gone away they have just shifted to different - and more dangerous - drugs.
All else being equal, I would be for legalizing all drugs. Problem is the addictive nature of drugs like heroin and meth don't just harm the people that choose to use them, but also usually turns those people into menances to others.
"making illegal supplies unattractive" I thought the point of this article is that growing pot on Nat'l Park lands is extremely profitable. Sorry if I missed your inflection saying the contrary.
Ottoman, it is profitable in states where recreational use is illegal. Not as much in states where it is legal.
"The Devil's Lettuce" is what recovering marijuana addicts call pot. I can give you a million reasons, primary is the erroneous perception of harm reduction as compared to other drugs. But I can assure you that the majority of marijuana is used by daily users. And daily use of marijuana places one in an addictive category. 75% of humans who smoke marijuana 100 times will statistically use cocaine at least once, either knowingly or unknowingly. You don't hear folks crying to legalize cocaine. In fact, no organization exists that advocates for that to my knowledge.
As a society we are asking the wrong question. The right question should be, why do you need to be stoned all the time? Because everyone I know who smokes stays stoned most of the time. They are "self-medicating". I suppose we could just go to the ADD/ADHD model and take other "legal" stimulants such as adderall and ritalin. 80 tons of that is prescribed annually to give folks more ability to "focus".
For those of us who deal with addicts, it is marijuana that gets most everyone to the bigger drugs, hands down, most every time.
Wrong, EC. Here in Seattle, the "legal" stores are complaining that "legal" marijuana is being taxed too much. Where are most people still buying their pot? On campus, on the corner, in the alley, in other words, still from the cartels. Yes, the state is very happy, but still getting only a pittance of the business. Certainly, no one I know with the habit is buying "legal" pot.
http://www.businessinsider.com/recreational-marijuana-washington-state-t...
Perhaps the tax scenerio is higher in Washington. As the articles i linked earlier, here in Colorado the price has enticed the cartels to move elsewhere. I can tell you that here in Breckenridge alone (a town of 5,000 permenant residents) there are 5 pot shops doing quite well. There are alot of people here buying "legal pot".
It sounds as if Breckenridge is truly "Colorado Rocky Mountain High" (with apologies to the late John Denver). Us? You're right. As liberal oligarchs, we just love taxing the hell out of any "vice." Not that we're hypocrites; we're just practical. If you're going to buy it, we're going to tax you, then complain when you don't buy enough. Sure. We would love it if people stopped smoking, drinking, gambling, etc., period, but if they won't, LET THEM PAY! Now, where did I put my lottery ticket? Our most liberal newspaper says I won four bucks!
You are right, a total abuse of the taxing power.