Pot Growers Wreak Havoc In Our Wildlands
I have posted before about illegal immigration and garbage on the southern border. Now we read about Mexican Pot Growers taking over our National Forests and Parks. This is not a rant against people from a specific country, nor against people who speak a specific language. This is more aggravation about politicians of all flavors ignoring an issue. We can pass a 700 Billion dollar bailout in a week, but we dally over this issue for years.
This story on Fox News - Officials: Mexican Pot Growers Are Polluting American Wilderness should whip American voters into a frenzy. Tell me again this is not an invasion. Tell me again that if pot growers can traipse around our wild lands, that terrorists can’t. This is absurd. Some snippets from the article online:
PORTERVILLE, Calif. — National forests and parks — long popular with Mexican marijuana-growing cartels — have become home to some of the most polluted pockets of wilderness in America because of the toxic chemicals needed to eke lucrative harvests from rocky mountainsides, federal officials said.
Seven hundred grow sites were discovered on U.S. Forest Service land in California alone in 2007 and 2008 — and authorities say the 1,800-square-mile Sequoia National Forest is the hardest hit.
Weed and bug sprays, some long banned in the U.S., have been smuggled to the marijuana farms. Plant growth hormones have been dumped into streams, and the water has then been diverted for miles in PVC pipes.
Rat poison has been sprinkled over the landscape to keep animals away from tender plants. And many sites are strewn with the carcasses of deer and bears poached by workers during the five-month growing season that is now ending.
“What’s going on on public lands is a crisis at every level,” said Forest Service agent Ron Pugh. “These are America’s most precious resources, and they are being devastated by an unprecedented commercial enterprise conducted by armed foreign nationals. It is a huge mess.”
In the meantime, the only cleanup is done by volunteers. On Tuesday, the nonprofit High Sierra Trail Crew, founded to improve access to public lands, plans to take 30 people deep into the Sequoia National Forest to carry out miles of drip irrigation pipe, tons of human garbage, volatile propane canisters, and bags and bottles of herbicides and pesticides.
“If the people of California knew what was going on out there, they’d be up in arms about this,” said Shane Krogen, the nonprofit’s executive director. “Helicopters full of dope are like body counts in the Vietnam War. What does it really mean?”
Think the problem is limited to California? Think again. There are are a bunch of eyewitness accounts on various hunting message boards. I have plucked a few from CouesWhitetail.com where hunters have actually come across grow operations, and seen or photographed drug smugglers. Hunters are seeing this stuff and reporting it. Where are all of our green friends? Where are the suburbanites who are so concerned about environmental issues? Again, this issue is real, but not trendy. Here are some examples, as promised:
So, what is it going to take, for this problem to really be addressed, in a meaningful manner?
[...] Desert Rat has details of further destruction of border lands and nobody doing anything about it. [...]
October 13th, 2008 at 7:48 am