Pubdate: Tue, 10 Jun 2003
Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2003 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact:  http://www.csmonitor.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/83
Author: Daniel B. Wood, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WILD WEST: DRUG CARTELS THRIVE IN US NATIONAL PARKS

SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, CALIF. - Even Br'er 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.

'Now There Is 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 US 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 (NPS). He 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.

Here 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 and 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
NPS 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 can also debilitate wildlife, especially in the
dry season when many species come from far afield for summer's paltry
trickles. Without water, animals will 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 US law," says Ms. Bundock.

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 tarping.

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.

The Search for 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," says Mr. Barna. 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.

And the 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," says one. "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
head[ing] to areas which are more populated," says Laura Mark, an
agent for the US Forest Service. "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, officials say -
partly out of worry about rival growers, 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 Mr. Tweed.

Officials say public exposure is one of the only solutions. They hope
more citizens will pressure lawmakers for funding and personnel to
stop covert cultivation, in part so that perpetrators' fears of
capture might curtail the activity. Though park officials are
reluctant to reveal the number of staff assigned to ferret out
marijuana plots, 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," says Tweed. "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.
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