Cartels Turn U.S. Forests Into Marijuana Plantations, Creating Toxic Mess

Empty turtle shells, decaying skunk carcasses and a set of deer antlers lay strewn about an empty campsite in California's Sierra National Forest. The butchered animals, as well as several five-pound propane canisters, camp stoves and heaps of trash, were all that remained of the 69 marijuana plantations recently uncovered in Fresno County as part of operation "Save our Sierras." The massive operation that began in February has already seized about 318,000 marijuana plants worth an estimated $1.1 billion, officials announced last week. In addition to 82 arrests, the multi-jurisdictional federal, state and local operation netted 42 pounds of processed marijuana, more than $40,000 in cash, 25 weapons and three vehicles. "Mexican drug trafficking organizations have been operating on public lands to cultivate marijuana, with serious consequences for the environment and public safety," said Gil Kerlikowske, chief of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy at a briefing on the investigation. The drug plantations are as much an environmental menace as they are a public safety threat. Growers in Fresno County used a cocktail of pesticides and fertilizers many times stronger than what is used on residential lawns to cultivate their crop. "This stuff leaches out pretty quickly," said Shane Krogen, executive director of the High Sierra Volunteer Trail Crew in charge of helping clear the land of chemicals and trash so it can begin its slow restoration. While the chemical pesticides kill insects and other organisms directly, fertilizer runoff contaminates local waterways and aids in the growth of algae and weeds. The vegetation in turn impedes water flows that are critical to frogs, toads and salamanders in the Kings and San Joaquin rivers, Krogen said. The Sierra operations are the latest in a growing number of illegal plantations run by foreign suppliers who have moved north of the U.S.-Mexico border where they are closer to U.S. drug markets. Of the 82 individuals arrested in the "Save our Sierras" sting, all but two were Mexican or some other foreign nationality. Bankrolled by sophisticated drug cartels, suppliers are sidestepping border patrols to grow in relative obscurity on Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service lands across the West and even into the Southeast...NYTimes

Must be appropriation time again.