Pubdate: Sun, 15 Jun 2003
Source: Scotland On Sunday (UK)
Copyright: 2003 The Scotsman Publications Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/405
Author: Daniel B Wood, In Sequoia National Park California

PARKLAND DRUG GROWERS TURN AMERICA'S WILDERNESS INTO WILD WEST

THERE was a time when a visitor to one of America's national parks only had 
to worry about running into a grizzly bear with a sore head. These days 
they have gun-toting drug dealers and armed park rangers to contend with.

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 two-and-a-half hours, one mile, and a 1,000ft gain in altitude, they 
come across evidence of the criminal activity that officials describe as 
the biggest threat to national parks since their creation more than a 
century ago. Beside an abandoned camp scattered with rubbish and human 
waste, lie empty bags of fertiliser, 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.

Since the late 1990s, marijuana cultivation has escalated dramatically in 
the national forests. Marijuana seizures in California national parks have 
jumped 10-fold, from 45,054 plants in 1994 to 495,000 plants last year.

But since September 11, drug farming has increasingly spread from remote 
forests to more-public national parks. Tighter security at 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 organised. 
International drug cartels - made up largely of Mexican nationals - seem 
especially drawn to the bounty. And their harvests can be huge: last year, 
officials at Sequoia National Park in California seized the biggest stash 
of all, with 34,000 plants in five locations at an estimated street value 
of $140m (UKP84m).

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

Although the problem is nationwide, affecting many of America's 388 
national parks, it is greatest in California, Utah, and Arkansas, and in 
parks with international borders, such as Big Bend in Texas and Glacier in 
Montana.

Bill Tweed, chief naturalist at Sequoia National Park, between Los Angeles 
and San Francisco, said:

"They are killing wildlife, diverting streams, introducing non-native 
plants, creating fire and pollution hazards, and bringing the spectre of 
violence."

Last year, officials destroyed eight tonnes of marijuana at Sequoia 
National Park and counted thousands of plants that had already been 
harvested. Eight Mexican nationals are due for trial in September.

A version of this article has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor
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