Cannabis Cultivation

[Jeffshadows]

Cannabis Cultivation
U.S. Forest Service land is increasingly fertile ground for pot plants grown by Mexican cartels
by Leo W. Banks
Tucson Weekly

April 16th, 2009

Media references to Mexican drug cartels are invariably followed by some variation of the phrase "spill over into this country." Those five words are key to the flak currently being sent up by the federal government—most recently by Janet Napolitano, former Arizona governor and now head of the Department of Homeland Security.

She wants you to believe the feds have a plan to respond should Mexican cartel violence "spill over into this country."

Spill over? It's already here, in our border communities, as well as in the 230 cities across the nation where the cartels are active. The wave of home invasions in Tucson and the kidnappings in Phoenix aren't the result of Tupperware parties gone bad.

Even our public lands are being hit, especially in the Tonto National Forest around Payson, 90 miles northeast of Phoenix.

Between 2006 and 2008, the Gila County Narcotics Task Force took down 43 pot farms, eradicating 82,904 marijuana plants, says Task Force commander Johnny Sanchez. All but a handful were on Tonto land.

All of the farms larger than 1,000 plants were apparently operated by Mexican drug organizations. The workers are usually Mexican nationals brought across the border for that purpose. They might arrive at a grow site in April and live there until harvest in October.

These men are considered "high-value assets," according to a Forest Service criminal investigator who asked for anonymity. They're generally from rural, marijuana-growing areas in Mexico, such as Michoacán, which means they're experienced in the drug trade and capable of surviving outdoors.

But at harvest time, the cartel acquires additional workers, sometimes by kidnapping them off the streets of Phoenix and hauling them to Payson to work off smuggling debts. Others are brought across the border on the promise that they'll be set up with some unnamed job. They're driven out to the forest and—only then—told of their new "employment." The forest investigator says these "farm workers" are often armed. Gunfire has erupted in the Tonto at least twice.

In September 2005, bear hunters approached a pot farm along Deer Creek, in the Mazatzal Wilderness, and were fired upon by cartel guards. The hunters returned fire and retreated to notify police.

The following year, a Forest Service tactical team raided a site in the same area and took fire from a guard carrying a semiautomatic rifle. Two men were arrested, and one escaped. The rifleman, a Mexican national who was shot in the abdomen, was eventually sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The investigator worries about possible encounters in which ordinary Americans trying to enjoy the outdoors could accidentally walk into trouble.

"If you're a hiker or a hunter carrying a gun, and you stumble into one of these areas, and they mistake you for somebody else, shooting can easily erupt," says the investigator. "I wish I could tell you it's not dangerous, but I can't."

In 2007, officers found a grow site a mile and a half from a Boy Scout camp 12 miles north of Payson. A Scout leader out hiking spotted the marijuana and notified police.

Cartel workers live in camps consisting of canvas tarps for shelter or branch lean-tos set against a canyon wall. They eat rice and beans cooked on camping stoves and get resupplied by men who march in with backpacks full of provisions.

The farms, usually at ravine bottoms or on hillsides, are irrigated by gravity-fed piping systems connected to natural springs or waterfalls as much as 5 miles away.

"These areas are so remote, it kicks our butts to get into them, and they usually hear us coming," says Sanchez, adding that guards sometimes rig access trails with trip wire strung with spoons or cans that rattle when disturbed.

So far, Arizona lawmen have not encountered booby traps, as has happened in California's national forests. About 57 percent of all marijuana grown on American public land originates there, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

In July 2007, John Walters, then head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, told the Washington Times: "America's public lands are under attack. Instead of being appreciated as national treasures, they are being exploited and destroyed by foreign drug-trafficking organizations and heavily armed Mexican marijuana cartels."

The Sequoia National Forest, in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, 350 miles from the border, has been a dangerous battlefield in the drug war. In August 2008, Walters visited Sequoia and said law enforcement had eradicated 420,000 marijuana plants in that forest in the previous eight years.

The first pot farms at Sequoia were discovered in 1998. The first raids on cartel-run grow sites in Tonto occurred in 2002.

But they've been found on other Arizona public lands as well. The Forest Service investigator said the Coconino Forest, around Flagstaff, eradicated 4,200 plants in 2008.

No farms have been discovered in the Kaibab Forest above Grand Canyon. "But we had a dramatic increase in activity last year in Southern Utah," says the investigator. "If they're in Southern Utah, they're probably in Kaibab, too."

No farms have been discovered in Southern Arizona's Coronado Forest, either, due to the lack of water, says Keith Graves, former district ranger in Nogales, now border liaison between the forest and the federal Secure Border Initiative.

The Tonto gets hit hard because of its proximity to Phoenix, where drug organizations thrive. It also has good water sources; Highway 260, which cuts through the forest, makes for easy re-supply.

One advantage of growing marijuana in the United States is that it bypasses border security. But U.S.-grown pot also draws a heftier price because it's often a better grade. "And they're less likely to have to deal with competing smuggling organizations, so it's cheaper," says the forest service investigator.

But the farms take a big toll on the environment. Cartel workers cut down trees and brush, causing erosion, and divert streams to access water. They leave behind piles of trash, as well as human waste and even banned pesticides smuggled up from Mexico that can wash into streams after rains.

Task Force Commander Sanchez, who has worked narcotics enforcement for 20 years, expects the problem to eventually "spill over" onto the San Carlos and White Mountain Apache reservations, as well as other reservations well beyond the Tonto.

"I don't think this will slow down," he says. "We're not winning the war on drugs, I can tell you that."

[JoelHazelton]

Legalizing it would take care of this issue real quick. The drug lords would certainly just move on to other illegal imports, but at least they wouldn't be growing pot in our national forests. Just a thought...

[te_wa]

the last sentence says it all...

[Jeffshadows]

Yea, it's actually nice to hear honesty from an official!

[dysfunction]

Very surprising, but refreshing. I do not believe the "war on drugs" to be winnable in the first place. Man's appetite for them hasn't exactly ever subsided throughout history. So far all we've managed to do is create a lucrative black market.

[chumley]

Legalizing it would take care of this issue real quick. The drug lords would certainly just move on to other illegal imports, but at least they wouldn't be growing pot in our national forests. Just a thought...

Very true. Unfortunately, neither our state government nor the federal government really seems to be doing anything about border security, drugs, crime, or cartels (all of the above?).

I read this in a Canadian newspaper today:

The Border for Dummies
National Post
Published: Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Can someone please tell us how U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano got her job? She appears to be about as knowledgeable about border issues as a late-night radio call-in yahoo.

In an interview broadcast Monday on the CBC, Ms. Napolitano attempted to justify her call for stricter border security on the premise that "suspected or known terrorists" have entered the U. S. across the Canadian border, including the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack.

All the 9/11 terrorists, of course, entered the United States directly from overseas. The notion that some arrived via Canada is a myth that briefly popped up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and was then quickly debunked.

Informed of her error, Ms. Napolitano blustered: "I can't talk to that. I can talk about the future. And here's the future. The future is we have borders."

Just what does that mean, exactly?

Just a few weeks ago, Ms. Napolitano equated Canada's border to Mexico's, suggesting they deserved the same treatment. Mexico is engulfed in a drug war that left more than 5,000 dead last year, and which is spawning a spillover kidnapping epidemic in Arizona. So many Mexicans enter the United States illegally that a multi-billion-dollar barrier has been built from Texas to California to keep them out.

In Canada, on the other hand, the main problem is congestion resulting from cross-border trade. Not quite the same thing, is it?

[te_wa]

"Mexico is engulfed in a drug war" is bs. The notion that the entire country suffers and it is unsafe to go anywhere in Mexico is utter hype and of course the medium Canadian Post covering the story is not responsible for error, or misleading the public. Yes, some border issues arise from the warlord battles centered on the town of Juarez, but it is definatley not all of "Mexico". Youre not going to get killed on a weekend trip to Rocky Point. Plain and simple, its hidden racism at its finest. A pre-judgement at the least.
Im sure this is partially hurting Mexico's tourism and visitor industry.

[azbackpackr]

All of this bs from the US govt. just pushes my buttons. Legalize it!

[Jeffshadows]

What's more, it detracts from areas of the globe that truly are unsafe in the ways they describe. I would label it xenophobia, at least.

[JoelHazelton]

Very surprising, but refreshing. I do not believe the "war on drugs" to be winnable in the first place. Man's appetite for them hasn't exactly ever subsided throughout history. So far all we've managed to do is create a lucrative black market.

They want to restrict all of us to "legal" vices. A nation full of alcoholics and sex-addicts where Starbucks thrives. Thank god for hiking or I'd still be involved in all this marijuana BS.

[chumley]

Thank god for hiking or I'd still be involved in all this marijuana BS.

You make it sound like the two are mutually exclusive. ;)

[JoelHazelton]

Hahaha. Yeah, I guess that's misleading. They intermingled for a while with me, then hiking just kind of took over.

[JimmyLyding]

We saw some new-looking hose reels in South Fork Deer Creek canyon a while ago. Now I know why that Tonto NF ranger I ran into on Mount Ord had an AR-15 and a shotgun in the front seat along with the K-9 unit

[writelots]

You notice how nicely illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and terrorists are lumped into one group of nefarious, treacherous villans? I know I sleep better knowing that only nicely mannered, law-abiding Americans surround me each night. Heavens knows we'd NEVER invade someone's country and try to supplant their way of life...

[Jeffshadows]

You notice how nicely illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and terrorists are lumped into one group of nefarious, treacherous villans? I know I sleep better knowing that only nicely mannered, law-abiding Americans surround me each night. Heavens knows we'd NEVER invade someone's country and try to supplant their way of life...

The standard cast of characters used to sway the uninformed...

[cactuscat]

No better time or place to smoke out than in the woods!!

[Sun_Ray]

Cactuscat, I knew I liked you!

[PaleoRob]

Not that I am an expert on cannabis cultivation, but I doubt that anyone is growing significant quantities of weed on the North Kaibab. A) unlike the forests by Phoenix, there's no nearby market or easy transportation off the forest. B)There is really no water with which to irrigate any crop. C) Having driven or walked over significant portions of the N. Kaibab, I never once encountered so much as one illegal plant there. Doesn't mean there weren't, but there were no massive irrigated fields like there are further north and south.