Feds battle marijuana growers on public land
National parks and forests increasingly are sites of large-scale illicit drug operations, officials say.
Wildfires aren't the only thing heating up public lands in the West this summer. Late last week federal agents seized the largest outdoor marijuana growing operation ever detected in Colorado at the Pike National Forest in the central part of the state. A few days earlier, officials had to close part of Sequoia National Park in central California while rangers swept in on helicopters to destroy pot plants at several sites.
"We're seeing more grows and larger grows," said Jeffrey Sweetin, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Rocky Mountain division.
Where law enforcement officers used to see relatively small marijuana-growing operations tended by a variety of local groups, they're now seeing major drug-trafficking organizations set up large operations with thousands of plants, he said.
Officials seized about 14,500 plants at Pike National Forest, in one of what Sweetin expects will total about a dozen such seizures this year on public lands in the division that covers Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming. In the mountain West, marijuana harvesting is at its peak between mid-August and late September.
Increasingly, officials are linking large-scale marijuana operations in Colorado and Utah to Mexican drug trafficking organizations operating on the West Coast of the United States, particularly in California.
The problem isn't new to federal land managers. For several years now, they have been grappling with large-scale drug production on public land. The remote locations, relatively light law enforcement activity and vast territory make national parks and forests attractive places for drug producers. That's especially true for marijuana growers, who require significant acreage for cultivation, space for drying the leaves after the harvest and a camp for those tending the crop.
Gill Quintana, the Forest Service's special agent in charge for the Colorado seizure, said in a statement that the drug operations create significant issues for the agency: "The impacts are numerous -- resource damage to the lands due to clearing the areas to prepare the garden site, trash left behind, chemicals used to grow the crop can seep into the watershed and the public safety issues associated with [the] recreating public coming in contact with these organizations."
The trafficking organizations responsible for the marijuana crops are well-organized and well-funded, Sweetin said. It takes significant resources and staff to set up a growing operation, support those tending the camp and haul out the harvest. In addition, because marijuana is a thirsty crop, it needs to be irrigated when cultivated in the arid West. Officials often find miles of irrigation pipes and elaborate pumping systems have been installed to support the crops.
The drug traffickers running the growing operations aren't the only ones requiring deep pockets. "These [seizures] turn into major trash-removal operations for the National Park Service and the Forest Service and create significant resource issues for those agencies," Sweetin said.
Park Service officials could not be reached for comment.