Mexican growers having big pot year in state Marijuana crops Decrease in enforcement helps Mexican growers

A members of the CAMPS team (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) unloads the remains of a marijuana garden from the forest above Lake Shasta on Wednesday, July 8, 2009. Illegal pot farming on public lands is a problem throughout California, the growers clear-cut forests and cause environmental problems from garbagee, irrigation pipes, hazardous wastes and pesticides. Gardens sometimes contain as many as 30,000 plants. It is a major problem in Shasta and Lake counties, where forest pot farming has become a major scourge that state and federal drug enforcement agents are struggling to control. less A members of the CAMPS team (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting) unloads the remains of a marijuana garden from the forest above Lake Shasta on Wednesday, July 8, 2009. Illegal pot farming on public lands is a ... more Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, SFC Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, SFC Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Mexican growers having big pot year in state 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

Mexican drug traffickers have expanded their marijuana-growing operations in California parks as state and local governments have tightened spending and slashed jobs and services.

Law enforcement officials say the traffickers, taking advantage of the fact that there are fewer sheriff's deputies and rangers monitoring parks, are cultivating more pot than ever before. This year's multibillion-dollar crop is on pace to be the largest in history, said state officials.

"It's a huge problem," said Gordon Taylor, the assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "California is ground zero for domestic marijuana cultivation in the country."

The illicit crops are believed to be hidden on ridges and in gullies in California's 31 million acres offorest, with most being grown in state and national parks.

So far this year, more than a million plants have been seized by the state's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, or CAMP program, according to Michelle Gregory, the spokeswoman for the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, and the pot-growing season is not even half over.

"Our whole state is overrun," Gregory said. "It's an epidemic."

Much of the cannabis grown in California is being exported around the country, into Mexico and overseas. One batch recently harvested in Shasta County was tracked by drug enforcement agents to Chicago and South Carolina.

Fewer officers

This year, Shasta County has nearly equaled its record of 394,375 plants seized last year despitehaving only one full-time sheriff's sergeant and five part-timers available to patrol for marijuana.

Adjacent Trinity County, on the brink of financial collapse, has cut the number of sheriff's officers from 20 to 13. Sometimes no one is available to patrol the 3,200 square miles of mostly forested countryside in Trinity County, where Sheriff Lorrac Craig said drug cartels are running rampant.

The problem was evident earlier this month when 24 agents from a state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement task force swooped in on a large plantation on a ridge overlooking Hirz Bay on Shasta Lake in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

The five plots of marijuana - 15,474 plants in all - were bright green and easily visible from a helicopter. The caretakers had fled by the time agents arrived, and no arrests were made.

Immigrant labor

Even if the growers had been captured, drug enforcement officers said, it might not have made a difference. The cartels can afford to sacrifice workers and crops, especially when the penalty usually amounts to nothing more than the deportation of a few low-level laborers - who typically are illegal immigrants. The growers, who often make less than $100 a day, are usually working off debts to "coyotes" who guided them across the border, and they know little or nothing about the overall operation, according to drug enforcement officials.

"We've had cases where some of the workers are kidnapped and told that if they don't work, something will happen to their families," Gregory said. "A lot of them aren't going to talk because they've been threatened, and we often have a problem identifying them. If they are not in the computer system, their fingerprints don't mean anything."

Michael Johnson, the statewide commander of the CAMP task force, said often the only way to get to the source of the illegal activity is to allow the crop to be harvested and follow the crop to its delivery point.

"They are making money on this," said Johnson, gesturing toward the giant mound of high-grade sinsemilla his agents had just pulled off the Shasta-Trinity ridge. He said the big, purple buds can fetch as much as $3,500 a plant.

"The money is being used for other illegal operations, like smuggling guns and methamphetamines," he said.

Just finding marijuana is often a problem given that helicopters cost a lot of money to fly and are seldom available to sheriff's officers, who are often responsible for finding and reporting plantations.

The CAMP team seized 92,971 plants in Trinity County last year, a fraction of what they would have gotten if there were enough sheriff's officers to adequately track down illegal plantations, Craig said.

"We just don't have the manpower to go out and chase them all down, and they know that," Craig said.

Similar problems were reported in Lake and Tulare counties, which were the top two pot-growing regions in the state in 2008. Shasta County was third. Trinity was eighth.

Environmental damage

The growers are so brazen that they often return to replant crops in the same plots that were recently raided, authorities said, and they don't care about the extensive environmental damage they cause by clear-cutting forests, damming up creeks and polluting public land with pesticides and trash.

Legalization is not the solution, Johnson said, given that most of the pot is being grown illegally on public parkland by foreign citizens who cannot be taxed.

"I've been doing this for five years, and there just seems to be more and more of it everywhere," Johnson said. "We don't even bother with medicinal grows. What we're concerned about is the destruction of the habitat."