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Marijuana Being Grown and Heavily Guarded Near Tourist Sites in US

Drug traffickers are planting millions of marijuana plants near tourist sites in the United States, guarding their plots with heavy weaponry. "We destroy their plants and they come back, sometimes to the same spot, and replant," U.S. Forest Service Special Agent Russ Arthur told CNN.

"It's definitely possible that hikers and campers are going to find themselves in the middle of a field facing some very dangerous, armed bad guys, because this problem is everywhere, and it's only getting worse."

Arthur said that marijuana sites linked to cartels have been found in 15 states. Last week, a portion of Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevada was closed to visitors while rangers dropped from helicopters into a marijuana farm a half-mile away from Crystal Cave, popular among tourists.

Officials said there were five sites in the Yucca Creek Canyon where investigators recovered tons of trash, netting, chemicals, and camping materials, which suggested the growers had been there, or planned to stay, for a long time. Though authorities destroyed the patch, 75 percent of the plants had been harvested, said park spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman.

"Last week for six days, instead of having families and children walking down to Crystal Cave, we were flying helicopters to do a law enforcement operation," she said. "That's not fair. You should be able to come to the park and enjoy it."

In Idaho earlier this summer, hikers came upon 12,545 marijuana plants valued at $6.3 million, officials said. This week, the Forest Service was destroying plants at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, where one year ago the agency brought out 10,000 plants valued at $8.5 million, according to chief ranger Mike Bremer.

And on Friday, the Drug Enforcement Administration said it had found 14,500 marijuana plants growing in a patch of forest land 40 miles southwest of Denver, Colorado, where campers have ventured.

Though traffickers have been planting on public lands for years, figures from the U.S. Forest Service indicate the sheer volume of marijuana plants on public land has increased every year since 2005—b y millions. And those are just the plants that the government knows about and has destroyed.

Most pot farms are cultivated by low-level cartel workers, many who are working to pay off smugglers who helped them cross the border, officials have said. Campsites are sophisticated and well hidden, with foxholes and sniper nests, Arthur told CNN.

The workers plant four to five farms at a time to get one good crop, assuming that two might be destroyed by law enforcement, one might fail because of weather, and another could be pilfered by what officers call "pot pirates," Americans who risk getting close to traffickers to score free pot, Arthur said.

Dean Growdon, an assistant sheriff and commander of the Lassen County, California, Narcotics Task Force, said he's especially concerned about pot farm violence now because hunting season is about to start. "We get more reports this time of year from hunters who've stumbled onto sites," he said. "We had a guy who discovered they were growing on the back portion of his property."

Two deputies are still recovering from being shot in June when they discovered a pot field, Sheriff Steven Warren said. In the encounter, one of the deputies shot and killed a grower, Warren said, and the surviving growers are being prosecuted, he said.

Although federal agents have stepped up raids on sites across the country, arrests are tough to make because growers know the terrain so well. When authorities drop into their camps, growers run off to hiding places or through the woods, making foot chases difficult.

In July, a sting in California's Fresno County—the largest ever in the US—netted 420,000 plants, worth $1.6 billion, and the arrests of 100 people. As many as 82 Mexican nationals were taken into custody and deported, the Fresno County state attorney's office told CNN. So far, the U.S. attorney's office has charged 16 people. If convicted, those without prior drug charges would face 10 years to life and a $4 million fine; those with drug records could get double that sentence.

It's still mostly a mystery how growers keep their camps going, how they transport their food, and where and how they move their finished product. It's also mostly unclear how they are managing to carry so much equipment into the woods.

But they are definitely causing expensive and irreversible damage to the ecosystem by damming up natural waterways to redirect water to their plants, poisoning plants and animals with insecticides, poaching for food, and leaving trash around the sites.

In Sequoia National Park, $1 million has been spent since 2006 on marijuana plantation cleanup alone, and the damage done to Crystal Cave will be felt for years to come, said Freeman.

"We are continually discovering new species in that cave, and we are letting Mexican cartels threaten to wipe that out.”
 

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