WESTERN SKIES - June 18, 2005

*** POT ON PUBLIC LANDS ***

ERIC WHITNEY: While methamphetamine gets lots of headlines for how its challenging rural law enforcement, it's not the only drug produced in remote locations. Marijuana growers also favor locations far from prying eyes, and for good reason, people caught growing pot face having their land seized by the state. So some growers plant their cannabis crops on public lands. Adam Burke reports from California on how the trend appears to be becoming more organized and on a much larger scale.

ADAM BURKE: It wasn't a helicopter flyover, or a federal sting investigation that uncovered the extensive web of marijuana gardens in Sequoia National Park. It was a backcountry fisherman. In August, 2002, a man who had spent several hours fly fishing in the remote reaches of the Kaweah River decided to bushwhack up a steep slope to where he'd parked his car.

BOB WILSON: He came across two individuals that were dressed in full camouflage clothing, and he could tell that they had side arms.

BURKE: Bob Wilson is a law enforcement officer for the park.

WILSON: And at first he thought they were rangers, but he didn't understand why there would two individuals with camouflage clothing and guns, so he avoided them, and went off in a different direction and in the process of doing that stumbled across the marijuana gardens.

BURKE: The man made it back to his car frightened but unharmed. Since then, law enforcement officials within the park have uncovered gardens deeper and deeper into the backcountry, all in remote, low-elevation areas.

As the number of plants eradicated each year continues to grow, so do concerns about public safety and environmental damage.

MASKED RANGER: We've taken out to date, AK 47 assault rifle, multiple long-arms, thirty-thirty rifles, 12 gauge shotguns, semi-automatic handguns, 9 millimeter, .40 caliber, .45.

BURKE: This masked ranger wears sunglasses and face paint, and he doesn't give his name to protect his identity from drug traffickers. On this day, he's providing security for a trail crew that's doing restoration work at one of the garden sites. Drug traffickers have been already spotted in the park this year.

MASKED RANGER: They're coming in now and their doing one of two things. They're either already planting and in the process of cultivating, or they're scouting.

[sound of footsteps in forest]

BURKE: We plunge into a hollow next to the rushing brook-an almost indistinguishable trail threading downward between moss-covered oaks and white boulders. Warning signs in English and Spanish indicate that the area is under surveillance. A record fifty thousand plants were discovered in the park last fall.

MASKED RANGER: But what percentage of that aren't we finding? Because generally with drugs it's always the tip of the iceberg that we seem to bump into. So, there's probably a hundred thousand plants or there could be a hundred thousand plants lurking in this park.

At the garden complex, just two miles down the trail, crews are re-contouring the hillside with hoes, where the growers cut terraces a few years ago. Park restoration ecologist Athena Demetry says her crews have bagged up literally tons of trash, from sleeping bags and cell phones, to car batteries and fifty pound bags of fertilizer.

ATHENA DEMETRY: In just these 5 acres of garden area, we documented two thousand eight hundred and seventy pounds of fertilizer and all of that was carried in on somebody's back.

BURKE: Growers lived on the site all summer long. They established garbage pits, tent sites, cooking areas, and the garden plots themselves; diverting streams with miles of black plastic irrigation tubing. It's an organizational finger print that's replicated throughout the park at every growing site. It even extends to the trail we hiked in on.

SECOND RANGER: We didn't build that trail. It's a doper trail. It looks better than some of ours, in some cases.

BURKE: Another park law enforcement agent, who also prefers to remain anonymous.

SECOND RANGER: That's not good either, a trail is something that people like to follow. So, if a park visitor and their family just happened on that trail, they would think "Oh, here's a nice trail, let's follow it." And guess where they would end up? Right smack in the middle of a marijuana operation.

BURKE: While this activity has only recently surfaced at Sequoia National Park, law enforcement officials say Mexican drug cartels have been growing marijuana on public lands in California for well over a decade. Some traffic in other drugs, like methamphetamine and cocaine, but authorities believe public lands pot farming is their bread and butter. And the activity is now widespread. Last year, five hundred sixty thousand marijuana plants were eradicated from National Forest lands in California alone. And cartels have also been linked to public lands in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Arizona and Arkansas.

Experts on drug policy and drug cartels are not surprised.

PETER SMITH: Put yourself in the shoes of a drug trafficker.

Peter H. Smith, of the University of California, San Diego, has studied Latin American drug traffickers for close to 2 decades. Smith says the US-Mexico border exacts a kind of tariff that these organizations can avoid by producing domestically.

SMITH: The parks are very remote, they're hard to police, there's a lot of tree cover for various operations. And given the kind of pressures they might be feeling within Mexico and at the border, it simply make more sense to come to the United States.

BURKE: There have been a few successful efforts to crack these organizations. Val Jimenez is operations commander of the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, a multi-agency group that provides enforcement and eradication support throughout the state of California. Jimenez points to painstaking investigations over the last six years that placed dozens of upper-level traffickers and a handful of leaders behind bars. One group, busted last year, had gardens ranging along four hundred miles of the Sierra Nevada.

VAL JIMENEZ: This organization was growing marijuana from the southern part of the valley, the central valley of the mountain area, all the way up to the Oregon border. And so when we took this group down, we made a significant impact on the distribution of marijuana here in the state of California.

BURKE: Still, it's not clear that enforcement has affected the availability of marijuana-or the overall capacity of production centers dispersed throughout the United States.

SMITH: Trying to stop supply, or trying to stop transit, is impossible if you have as much demand as we have.

Again, Peter H Smith of the University of California.

SMITH: It's like squeezing a balloon, you know you squeeze it tight at one side and it simply pops up elsewhere.

BURKE: The rangers at Sequoia National Park have witnessed the same dynamic.

MASKED RANGER: What we've seen from this park is that they won't leave a garden site until you physically take it. And once you do that they'll just bop over the river or just bop over the stream to the next site. You literally have to push them out.

BURKE: In Colorado, the Drug Enforcement Administration has linked international drug traffickers to drug cultivation sites on private lands. And while there have been no confirmed cartel operations on public lands in the state, federa; officials say it's probably just a matter of time. One thing's for sure: the eleven billion consumer marijuana market in the US remains an alluring carrot for anyone willing to take the risk.

For Western Skies, I'm Adam Burke.