Orange County Sheriff’s Department narcotics investigators remove thousands of plants of marijuana from Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, California (Picture: AP/The Orange County Register, Ken Steinhardt)

Everyone knows California has a relaxed attitude to marijuana, but police were still shocked to find around $5 million worth of pot plants growing out in the open in a public park.

Park rangers were surveying the plant life in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park when they stumbled upon the crop – about 4,000 mature plants in a ravine just behind a group of multi-million-dollar mansions.

The crop was just beyond hiking trails but could have easily been found by anyone getting off the beaten track.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department sat on the find for a couple of weeks, staking out the crop in the hope of catching the crooks coming in for harvest.


It took officers all day to remove an estimated 4,000 plants (Picture: AP/The Orange County Register, Ken Steinhardt)

But when no-one showed police officers and park rangers set about cutting down and removing the marijuana on Friday.



It took them all day to remove the plants, airlifting bales by helicopter to a nearby road so they could be bagged and transported by truck.

One sheriff’s department spokesman told the New York Daily News that the pot was packed into as many as 300 bags weighing 20lb each, making the total haul upwards of 6,000lb, or more than 2,700kg.

A helicopter was brought in to airlift the marajuana to a nearby road (Picture: AP/The Orange County Register, Ken Steinhardt)

Police estimate there were around 6,000lb of plants worth £3 million (Picture: AP/The Orange County Register, Ken Steinhardt)