Public Lands, Public Debates: A Century of Controversy

Reefer Madness

100 Reefer Madness summer 2010 was a busy time on the angeles national Forest. The Forest service and its contractors poured lots of time and energy into restoring the badly burned terrain in the aftermath of the 2009 station fire. caltrans and its crews labored to reconstruct the torched, eroded, and washed-out roads that had been damaged during the historic blaze that consumed 250 square miles. although shut out from the scorched portions of the san Gabriel Mountains, tens of thousands of angelenos recreated along its trails, creeks, and rivers—hiking, running, biking, and fishing. They gamboled in this island of green set within a sea of concrete. some of that green was a bit more worrisome than others: across that summer and early fall, Forest service officers collaborated with la county sheriffs and other law-enforcement agencies in raiding marijuana-growing sites on the angeles that were scattered across some of its most remote and difficult landscapes. by that late June, they already had destroyed upwards of ninety-six thousand plants, a cash crop worth an estimated $192 million. Then, in early July, members of the u.s. drug enforcement agency teamed up with local forces on two major busts in the vicinity of Fish canyon and Knapp Ranch. With police helicopters whirling overhead, the eradication teams weeded out more than eleven thousand plants valued at $22 million; as with other such efforts, they also cleaned out almost a ton of trash, irrigation pipes, herbicides and chemical fertilizers, tools and other material the growers had used to manage their illegal crop. later that month, the task force once again hit paydirt: after getting reports from hikers of suspicious activities in the forest, it sent three teams up a series of ridgelines and creekbeds, discovering forty-one sites that were home to nearly seventeen thousand plants (street value: $35 million). streams had been diverted by crude check dams whose flow then was piped to the cultivated fields; crews spent days cleaning out the irrigation systems and sweeping up the hazardous waste, and nearly a thousand pounds of garbage were airlifted out of the narrow canyons. even less accessible was a four-acre plot located in late september, half a mile up a steep, chaparral-choked slope in cow canyon, off the Glendora Ridge Road near Mt. baldy Village. to get to it, agents had to bushwhack into this rough country; they just missed capturing their grower—a radio Reefer Madness 101 was blaring when the team arrived at the site. as some officers eradicated six hundred and fifty plants, others stripped out irrigation infrastructure, bagged trash, and returned the nearby creek to its natural course, clearing the way for restoration crews to revegetate the cutover slope. These are only some of the reported incidents during the summer of 2010, a reflection of the serious impact marijuana production is having on the angeles national Forest, and on the three other national forests draped across the coastal ranges of southern california; warm-weather raids took place as well on the san bernardino, cleveland, and los Padres forests. “These illegal marijuana grows do more than just harm the people who use illicit marijuana, they destroy and poison public lands,” affirmed captain Ralph Ornelas of the la county sheriff’s narcotics bureau. “The many agencies involved in these operations will continue our aggressive efforts to clear the public land of this menace, so that the forest remains available for present and future generations.” That’s pretty tough talk. it seems justified, too, for the angeles national Forest has become a key node in the regional production and distribution of marijuana, which los angeles county sheriff lee baca has argued has become a $1.2 billion industry. Yet however substantial its economic impact in southern california may be, it is nothing compared to the massive output that flows out of the so-called emerald triangle in northern california: Humboldt, lake, and Mendocino counties—and particularly the national and state forests that lie within this fertile region—are responsible for approximately 80 percent of the state’s illegal growing. That’s a ton of weed. actually, it may run as high as 49,105 metric tons. so reports the u.s. Office of national drug control Policy, which issued data on the last four years of eradication efforts in california. With 2006 as its baseline, when 2,642,352 plants were seized, the number climbed to 4,961,313 in 2007; rose to 5,432...