AC360° Covers Public Land Grow-Ops
June 15th, 2009 by Rick
AC360° Correspondent, Randi Kaye ran a report on the apparent growing trend of growing marijuana in national parks and public land. No, it’s not being done by a roving group of dead-heads or Phish fans hiding out in the bushes. The people that are doing it, now cultivate 80% of outdoor marijuana growth in these places.
Supposedly, the squatters of our wonderful national parks who are tending pot farms, may be illegal immigrants that were brought over the border by the Mexican drug cartels. Many are forced to work as farmers; taking care of the seeds, fertilizer and anything else needed to continue the green garden.
It seems it’s a win/win for the cartels. They already know all the drug-smuggling routes and possibly have bribes in the wind that help them gain access to the United States so it makes sense that they would bring over illegal immigrants to “work” in America. If the illegals become captured, they scratch that cultivation, find more illegals and then start over in another area — all of the locations of a certain cartel will not be raided, so something will make it to the black market, thus bringing back money to the cartel.
The adventure for Kaye and deputies from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department begin with a ride in a helicopter to Los Padres National Forest in California, just two hours from Los Angeles. The pilot slowly hovers over roughly 7,000 marijuana plants — Kaye says the aroma was overwhelming with an estimated $3.5m worth. She watched as the officers uprooted the plants, destroying the crop. As the deputies watched over, armed and ready for action, Kaye herself pulled up a plant with ease. Stalks were broken in two to ensure unrecoverable damage.
After informing Kaye and her team that sometimes the growers stayed nearby, armed with AK-47s, hiding in homemade underground bunkers, the deputies and team pushed a bit deeper into the forest and found the “hooch” (or camp) that the growers use from Spring to Fall, the optimal time for a harvest. The deputies went through it looking for any drugs or weapons and then destroyed it.
Time to go home, and with no growers being found, the team hiked back through the forest to a ridge and caught another chopper ride, all knowing deep inside that the physical and monetary damage that was done today will be recovered later down the road by the cartel.
Watch Randi Kaye’s full report tonight on AC360° @ 10pm ET or more than likely tune into tFS for a video of that broadcast.
More Pot Farms Popping Up in National Parks
May 15th, 2009 by RickDespite seizing around five million marijuana plants in California in 2008, more and more pot farms are being found on public land, with an increase of them being discovered in national parks.
NPR reports that the cultivation of cannabis were found in at least six national parks on the West Coast, the latest being the North Cascades National Park in Washington state, where last summer a pot field was raided. Even in Yosemite, one of the most famous of the national parks, they’ve began searching the terrain for the ganja.
Typically, the design of outdoor pot farms are the same; an area cut from a hillside – camouflaged by trees, an irrigation technique that taps into a nearby water source and makeshift living arrangements for the growers themselves.
Mostly, the growers escape capture from law enforcement and they say that these aren’t solo projects of some random marijuana farmer. More and more reports come in that the pot fields located within national parks are part of a much larger drug network. One Mexican drug ring family, the Barragans, dealt in crystal meth but also had a “side” business of cultivating marijuana across several western states. The leaders never got their hands dirty – family and other Mexican citizens were employed to run the farms and move their product.
The chief ranger in Yosemite, Steve Shackelton, said:
People coming to Yosemite shouldn’t fear this problem. Our job is to ensure that their visit is a safe visit, and we will ensure that. We do ensure that.
With the drug cartels or even the campesinos (disposable workers) being on the public land, concern is growing that innocent citizens visiting the parks will be at risk of the growers desire to keep their weed a secret by any means necessary.
