BATTLING ILLEGAL MARIJUANA

LAKE COUNTY -- In September, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer
announced that the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting program broke
the one million plant barrier for the 2005 season, and as of Oct. 26,
Lake County alone had eradicated 145,732 plants with 80,000 of those
plants coming out of the National Forest.

Last year Lake County had a record year by eradicating 85,000 pot
plants, but they have far surpassed that this year, said Deputy Steve
Brooks of the Lake County Sheriff's Office.

Brooks is working full-time to ensure that illicit pot growing comes
to an end, because not only is it illegal, it's harming the
environment and putting the public at risk.

"You can throw a dart at a map of the U.S. Forest Service, and you'll
probably hit a grow spot," said Matt Knudson, a law enforcement
officer with the Mendocino National Forest, who works with Brooks.

Lake County is 1,261 square miles, with several thousand acres of
public land including Mendocino National Forest, Cow Mountain and
Knoxville Recreation Areas, Boggs Mountain State Forest and Clear
Lake State Park. While beautiful and open to all, these lands have
become magnets for illegal pot growing, especially the national forests.

This trespass cultivation, the season for which runs April through
October, also impacts the ecosystem.

"I've seen camps with almost 20 people living around the clock in the
forest," Brooks said.

These pot work crews also generate a lot of garbage, said Brooks, as
the work crews rotate and bring new supplies in each week by
strapping large boxes to backpack frames and hiking it in to the grow plot.

Not only has he seen "tons and tons of garbage," but Brooks said he's
seen the toxic remainders of the tools of agriculture and the
destruction of wildlife.

Drip line irrigation is placed in streams and routed to the grow
plots which may be a considerable distance away and "they'll dam up
the creek and add fertilizer to the water and pipe it to the plants,"
Brooks added.

"There are miles and miles of this irrigation tubing up in the forest
and in the streams," he said, "and it will still be there when my
children have grandchildren."

All undergrowth is cleared away, leaving a canopy of trees to cover
the growing crop, but this clearing of undergrowth causes run-off and erosion.

In some grow areas, Brooks has found 400 to 500 pounds of unused
fertilizer, left to be washed away in the winter rains, which will
kill everything around it and leach into the watershed.

The crews show total disregard for the land as they leave everything
empty propane canisters, garbage, fertilizer and poison.

The poison is to kill all animals within the grow area, which
includes mice, squirrels and deer that may eat the plants; but, said
Brooks, it has the added effect of poisoning other animals in the
food chain. Raptors, owls and mountain lions who eat the poisoned
animals also die, as well as scavenging animals such as vultures.

Poaching is a problem, and at one site this year there were animal
carcasses strung on wires surrounding the plot and deer hides on the
ground, reported Brooks.

Bears, who are attracted to the large amounts of garbage, are killed,
as are any animals that might harm the crops. Also in danger, said
Brooks, are hunters who stumble into an illegal operation.

"We advise hunters, hikers and bikers not to confront anyone," Brooks
said. "If they have a GPS and can give us the coordinates, great
we'll take care of it."

The pot grow workers in the forest many of whom are illegal
immigrants are probably armed, said Brooks; this year, authorities
seized 19 firearms.

The majority of the marijuana growing operations in the National
Forest are run by crime families out of Mexico, some of whom are well
known in the area, Brooks said. These families, he explained, found
it was hard to get the marijuana out of Mexico, so they moved to
rural counties in the U.S. to grow the crops.

As a result, they bring people across the border, give them supplies
and bring them up to live in the grow area, where these workers can
earn between $10,000 and $30,000 per year, Brooks said. But the real
profit is for the growers, as a single plant can be worth $7,000 and
many grow plots, he said, have thousands of plants.

"We go after the profiteers," Brooks said.

It's these illegal operations that the sheriff's office looks for,
not legal medicinal marijuana growers, Brooks said.

He gets three to five calls per week from residents asking if they
are in compliance. Brooks stresses that he doesn't want people who
are ill to be afraid to contact him.

"We don't target medicinal growers," Brooks said. "The marijuana we
eradicate is not going to the seriously ill. It's making some very
few people wealthy and financing other drug operations, such as
manufacturing methamphetamine."

CAMP agents consist of members of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service,
California National Guard, California National Guard, California
Department of Fish and Game and dozens of local police and sheriff
departments. There are five teams to cover Northern, Southern and the
Central California regions.