Law Enforcement

 

Check out Rachel Becker’s Cal Matters piece on the ongoing illegal grow saga. We’ve covered this topic before, but nothing seems to change much.

For over a decade, Wengert and her colleagues have warned that illegal cannabis grows like this one dangerously pollute California’s public lands and pristine watersheds, with lasting consequences for ecosystems, water and wildlife.

Now, they’re sounding another alarm — that inadequate federal funding, disjointed communication, dangerous conditions and agencies stretched thin at both the state and federal levels are leaving thousands of grow sites — and their trash, pesticides, fertilizers and more — to foul California’s forests.

Dozens of fertilizer bags wept blue fluid onto the forest floor. Irrigation tubes snaked across the craters of empty plant holes. The cold stillness felt temporary — as if the growers would return at any moment to prop up the crumpled tents, replant their crop and fling more beer cans and dirty underwear into the woods.

Wengert has tallied nearly 7,000 abandoned sites like this one on California’s public lands. It’s almost certainly an underestimate, she said. Her team knows of only 587 that have been at least partly cleaned up.

No government agency can provide a comprehensive count; several referred CalMatters back to Wengert’s nonprofit for an unofficial tally.

Most of the sites Wengert’s team identified are in national forests, where “limited funding and a shortage of personnel trained to safely identify and remove hazardous materials” are driving a backlog in cleanups, a U.S. Forest Service spokesperson told CalMatters via an unsigned email.

The federal government, the spokesperson said, has dedicated no funding for the forest service to clean them up. And it’s leaving a mess in California.

And probably in other states as well.

The federal government owns nearly half of the more than 100 million acres in California. But it’s California’s agencies and lawmakers taking the lead on tackling the environmental harms of illegal grows — even as the problem sprawls across state, federal and privately managed lands.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s policy is to clean up all grows spotted on its 1.1 million acres of wildlife areas, ecological reserves, and other properties, officials say.

Staff assist with cleanups on federal lands “when asked,” said cannabis program director Amelia Wright — typically on California’s dime. But, she said, “That’s not our mandate.”

Fees and taxes on California’s legalized cannabis market fuel state efforts — supporting the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis program and funding tens of millions of dollars in grants for rehabilitating places damaged by cultivation. These grants can cover cleanups and sustainable cultivation projects, or even related efforts such as fish conservation.

The department has helped remove almost 350,000 pounds of trash and more than 920 pesticide containers from grows on public lands over nearly a decade.

But former Assemblymember Jim Wood, a North Coast Democrat, said that as he prepared to leave office in 2024, progress on cleanups was still too slow.

“It doesn’t reflect what I see is the urgency to watersheds, and the water and the people that are served by them,” he said.

In 2024, lawmakers passed Wood’s bill directing the Fish and Wildlife Department to conduct a study to inform a statewide cleanup strategy for cannabis grows. The law requires the department to provide regular reports to the Legislature about illegal cultivation and restoration efforts on lands both public and private.

To Wright, that’s a path forward, however prospective it may be.

“It just feels like such redemption right now for many of us,” Wright said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind program. So we didn’t have a playbook — we’re still creating it.”

But the study, which Wengert’s organization is conducting on the state’s behalf, isn’t due until next year. Meanwhile, the bloom of illicit pot grows on private land has been demanding California’s attention, a growing problem since voters legalized cannabis in 2016.

“It’s like whack a mole. They pop up in a new location, and then we have to go there — but the impacts are occurring across the landscape,” said Scott Bauer, an environmental program manager with the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis office.

The California Department of Justice told CalMatters it recently identified a “substantial increase of illicit cannabis cultivations on or adjacent to public lands.” Of the 605 sites where a multiagency state and federal task force ripped out illicit cannabis plants, roughly 9% were on public lands — up from an average of 3% to 4%.

“Everybody thought with legalization that a lot of these problems would go away,” said Wood, the former Assembly member.

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A federal void

In 2018, a federal audit lambasted the U.S. Forest Service for failing to clean up — or even document — trespass grows in national forests.

The agency was finding and eradicating cannabis grows in national forests effectively. But its failure to consistently clean them up, the audit said, put “the public, wildlife, and environment at risk of contamination” and could allow growers to return more easily.

Little has changed. From 2020 through 2024, when Gabriel worked for the agency, a spokesperson said the Forest Service “prioritized reclaiming sites over investigating active grows.”

But the agency said it still has received too little funding and has too few personnel trained to work with often hazardous materials. And the backlog persists. How big it is, the Forest Service wouldn’t say. After declining an interview request and taking two months to reply to emailed inquiries, a spokesperson said CalMatters must submit a public records request.

The Forest Service now is shifting the responsibility for cleanups to individual forests. That, too, contributes to the backlog, the spokesperson said.

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he has tried repeatedly to direct more funding to cleaning up trespass grows on federal lands, but with little success in Congress.

“We have tried just about everything,” Huffman said. “It’s clearly not enough.”

Now, under the Trump administration, the Forest Service is even more understaffed. A spokesperson said while law enforcement staffing “has remained steady,” roughly 5,000 non-fire employees “have either offboarded or are in the process of doing so” through “multiple voluntary separation programs.”

Having worked with some of those chemicals in the past, I don’t think handling them is an “other duty as assigned.” It sounds like it needs a dedicated and specially trained workforce, perhaps with hazard pay incentives?

We find more and more things that could benefit from the People’s Database.. how about number of grows found and cleaned up by District by year? Then reporters wouldn’t have to do FOIA requests.. if the data is even available.’

Here at TSW we’ve been discussing this since 2011, when we posted a warning for workers and visitors to National Forests as to what to avoid.

Here’s the story.. excerpts below. Then there was Mexican Drug Gangs invade Great Lake Forests in 2011, a link to a piece by Char Miller on marijuana grow-related rat poison and the fisher, and this link to an NY Times article in 2013. The idea was that when marijuana was legalized in California for recreational use, that that would solve the problem. Not so much, as it turns out.

Now, they’re sounding another alarm — that inadequate federal funding, disjointed communication, dangerous conditions and agencies stretched thin at both the state and federal level are leaving thousands of grow sites – and their trash, pesticides, fertilizers and more – to foul California’s forests.

Wengert has tallied nearly 7,000 abandoned sites like this one on California’s public lands. It’s almost certainly an underestimate, she said. Her team knows of only 587 that have been at least partly cleaned up.

No government agency can provide a comprehensive count; several referred CalMatters back to Wengert’s nonprofit for an unofficial tally.

Most of the sites Wengert’s team identified are in national forests, where “limited funding and a shortage of personnel trained to safely identify and remove hazardous materials” is driving a backlog in clean ups, a U.S. Forest Service spokesperson told CalMatters via an unsigned email.

The federal government, the spokesperson said, has dedicated no funding for the forest service to clean them up. And it’s leaving a mess in California.

*********

The federal government owns nearly half of the more than 100 million acres in California. But it’s California’s agencies and lawmakers taking the lead on tackling the environmental harms of illegal grows — even as the problem sprawls across state, federal and privately managed lands.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s policy is to clean up all grows spotted on its 1.1 million acres of wildlife areas, ecological reserves, and other properties, officials say.

Staff assist with clean ups on federal lands “when asked,” said cannabis program director Amelia Wright — typically on California’s dime. But, she said, “That’s not our mandate.”

*************

Where the State gets the bucks…

Fees and taxes on California’s legalized cannabis market fuel state efforts — supporting the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis program and funding tens of millions of dollars in grants for rehabilitating places damaged by cultivation. These grants can cover clean-ups and sustainable cultivation projects, or even related efforts like fish conservation.

The department has helped remove almost 350,000 pounds of trash and more than 920 pesticide containers from grows on public lands over nearly a decade.

Maybe there should be a federal tax on legal cannabis in states that have large amounts of federal land? Of course, legal is not really the problem, is it? Is it fair for legal cannabis to pay for remediating illegal grows?

In 2024, lawmakers passed Wood’s bill directing the Fish and Wildlife department to conduct a study to inform a statewide cleanup strategy for cannabis grows. The law requires the department to provide regular reports to the legislature about illegal cultivation and restoration efforts on lands both public and private.

To Wright, that’s a path forward, however prospective it may be.

“It just feels like such redemption right now for many of us,” Wright said. “It’s a one of a kind program. So we didn’t have a playbook — we’re still creating it.”

But the study, which Wengert’s organization is conducting on the state’s behalf, isn’t due until next year. Meanwhile, the bloom of illicit pot grows on private land has been demanding California’s attention, a growing problem since voters legalized cannabis in 2016.

********

The California Department of Justice told CalMatters it recently identified a “substantial increase of illicit cannabis cultivations on or adjacent to public lands.” Of the 605 sites where a multi-agency state and federal task force ripped out illicit cannabis plants, roughly 9% were on public lands — up from an average of 3 to 4%.

“Everybody thought with legalization that a lot of these problems would go away,” said Wood, the former assemblymember.

But, he added, the sites remain. “It’s a ticking environmental time bomb.”

And the contamination, new research confirms, lingers.

Apparently, the FS doesn’t get funding to clean up sites, but is investigating how the sites impact wildlife.

Please don’t push the red shiny buttons, or lick the big pink things,” Gabriel joked at the mouth of a well-worn path growers had carved into the woods. (Carbofuran, a dangerous and illegal pesticide often found on grow sites, is bright pink.)

The team, Gabriel explained, wasn’t there to clean up the grow. They didn’t have the money for that. Instead, he said, shouldering his backpack and strapping on a first aid kit, they were there to document the contaminants as part of a U.S. Forest Service-funded investigation into wildlife around cultivation sites.

“This site will sit on this landscape until someone acquires some level of funding,” Gabriel said. “And no one can really push it, until we actually get that data.”

We were allowed to use carbofuran on seed orchards in the 80’s.. it is really bad stuff.

In 2018, a federal audit lambasted the U.S. Forest Service for failing to clean up — or even document — trespass grows in national forests.

The agency was finding and eradicating cannabis grows in national forests effectively. But its failure to consistently clean them up, the audit said, put “the public, wildlife, and environment at risk of contamination” and could allow growers to return more easily.

Little has changed. From 2020 through 2024, when Gabriel worked for the agency, a spokesperson said the Forest Service “prioritized reclaiming sites over investigating active grows.”

**************

That seems like an odd prioritization, since LEOs are not necessarily trained nor funded to do it.  I wonder whether that prioritization occurs (occurred) in other places than California? It would be great if public safety (investigating active grows) didn’t compete with clean-ups. On the other hand, perhaps enough law enforcement could reduce the total number of grows and pollution? If we knew how many there were (via the People’s Database), folks could lobby Congress for funding.

But the agency said it still has received too little funding and has too few personnel trained to work with often hazardous materials. And the backlog persists. How big it is, the Forest Service wouldn’t say. After declining an interview request and taking two months to reply to emailed inquiries, a spokesperson said CalMatters must submit a public records request.

The Forest Service now is shifting the responsibility for cleanups to individual forests. That, too, contributes to the backlog, the spokesperson said.

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he has tried repeatedly to direct more funding to cleaning up trespass grows on federal lands, but with little success in Congress.

“We have tried just about everything,” said Huffman. “It’s clearly not enough.”

Now, under the Trump administration, the Forest Service is even more understaffed. A spokesperson said while law enforcement staffing “has remained steady,”  roughly 5,000 non-fire employees “have either offboarded or are in the process of doing so” through “multiple voluntary separation programs.”

Huffman put it more starkly. “They’ve been gutted,” he said. “The Forest Service right now has a sign on the door that says, ‘We’re out of the office. We’re not sure when we’ll ever be back.’”

I’m not sure that the 5000 non-fire employees (about the same that were hired in the last few years) would have made a difference if there is no funding.  If there were funding, it could be contracted out to companies that are experts at cleanup.

Few organizations are qualified to do science-informed cleanups, and none work as widely as Wengert and Gabriel’s.

California’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program is paying the team more than $5.3 million to conduct the legislatively mandated study on cleaning up grow sites, and also to train and support tribal teams and other organizations to do this work.

The study, and the training, include best practices for handling and disposing of hazardous waste, Gabriel said. More teams means more competition for the pot of state-allocated money, but he wants more allies in the fight.

Seems like another area where states and feds should work together.. but when do we worry about “state control” in cooperative efforts and when not?  Only in some states and only for some kinds of projects?

Just like fuel treatments, couldn’t the states and feds agree on what to track and track it the same way? Number of grows identified, number of grows remediated, for the FS by forest, accumulated over state, private and federal lands?

Thanks to Rich J. for pointing out this chart from this GAO report:

It definitely tells a story. Not a good one IMHO.  BLM land is important and conceivably people following the rules there is equally important.  And my observations on public land recreation is that many people don’t follow rules unless they think they might be enforced. It would be great to have a guest post from a BLM or FS field law enforcement person (or recently retired) and hear from them how to improve the situation.  If you have LE friends, please share this request.

This post is part of our effort to help journalists by providing expertise or links that may be difficult for them to easily find. This makes for better stories and a better informed public.

The question brought to us is “it has been documented that Forest Service law enforcement is not sending as many criminal referrals forward to the Department of Justice for prosecution since 2001, why would that be the case?” Law enforcement is one of the most important parts of the Forest Service organization, especially as lands get used more by growing populations.

I would ask if anyone has any ideas and/or evidence as to why this might be happening, please comment below.  If you don’t feel comfortable in an open forum, please email me at terraveritas at gmail.com.

From this link to the Forest Service website:

Special Agents are criminal investigators who plan and conduct investigations concerning possible violations of criminal and administrative provisions of the Forest Service and other statues (sic) under the U.S. Code. Special agents are normally plain clothes officers who carry concealed firearms, and other defensive equipment, make arrests, carry out complex criminal investigations, present cases for prosecution to U.S. Attorneys, and prepare investigative reports. Typically there is one special agent stationed in each geographic zone. All field agents are required to travel a great deal and usually maintain a case load often to fifteen ongoing criminal investigations at one time.

In addition, criminal investigators/special agents:

• Work cooperatively with Federal, State, local and tribal law enforcement agencies
• Conduct complex criminal and civil investigations involving Drug Trafficking Organizations, domestic terrorism and claims for or against the government
• Conduct undercover and surveillance operations
• Testify in court on behalf of the government

Some examples of criminal cases are:

• Illegal outfitter and guiding
• Theft of government property
• Timber theft
• Investigations of wildland fire origins
• Manufacture and distribution of controlled substances
• Assault of Federal employees or volunteers

Criminal investigators occasionally conduct internal and civil claim investigations.

From my own position of very little knowledge, the reasons could be a) there are fewer people in the past (harder to recruit, less funding?, b) they are collaborating with others in a different way so the prosecutions don’t go through the FS, c) wildfire investigations are using more time, d) illegal marijuana grows are using more time. A regional breakdown will be helpful in testing hypotheses, but we don’t have that yet.

Ideas?

The Colorado Springs Gazette had this lengthy piece today. A couple of interesting points.

1. More people are illegally growing marijuana on public lands in Colorado.

In a state where growing and selling cannabis have been legal for years, illegal marijuana grow operations in national forests have been on the rise for at least the last three years, officials say.

In 2017, 71,000 pot plants were eradicated in the U.S. Forest Service’s five-state Rocky Mountain Region. That’s up from 45,000 plants in 2016, 23,000 plants in 2015 and just 3,000 plants in 2014 – the vast majority each year in Colorado. In a report to Congress in 2016, the Forest Service estimated each plant to be worth $2,500, making the street value of the plants eradicated last year in the Rocky Mountain region more than $177 million.

As a resident of a Colorado county that is popular among illegal growers, it appears that legalizing has the effect of bringing folks in from outside the state who grow it m/l legally and then sell it illegally outside the state. But theoretically that shouldn’t matter as much on public lands as it was illegal there and continues to be illegal there.

2. But officials say it is more of a threat to the environment than a public safety threat.

In his eight total years with the Forest Service, Delbon said he’s helped eradicate more than 100 illegal grow sites, and has never once seen a boobytrap.

“It’s not like you have snipers out waiting for people or law enforcement to come into the grow site,” Delbon said. “Fortunately, the experience I’ve had, even in California, the growers themselves are typically the low worker bees. (When a raid happens,) they want to get out of there and avoid arrest.”

Most grows, for obvious reasons, are way off the beaten track and far from recreation areas, campgrounds and marked trails, Delbon added. “So, for the vast majority of the public recreating on our posted trails, the risk is very low.”

3. And some of the folks doing it are part of cartels but no one is sure how much is due to cartels.

In a review of court files from several prosecutions stemming from raids in 2017, Colorado Politics found examples of Mexican nationals working in coordination with outside groups to grow pot on public lands. In plea agreements, growers described moving to the state to be “weed farmers” for $200 a day, while being supplied by and connected to trafficking organizations.

And while several nationals of Mexico and other Latin American countries have been arrested and successfully prosecuted for growing marijuana on Colorado’s public lands, it’s unclear how many of those grow operations have connections to organized Mexican drug cartels.

“Generally, we find that it’s a mix, whether it’s local residents or maybe some other group that comes into the area, but to specifically tie it back to cartels, that’s probably not appropriate to make those connections at this point,” Delbon, the Forest Service agent, said.

4. They are not sure that the increase is due to legalization.

Delbon said he can’t weigh in yet on whether there’s a correlation between Colorado legalizing recreational marijuana in 2012 and the increased number of plants being illegally grown on federal lands in the state.

“Maybe the better answer for me is it’s too soon to tell,” Delbon said.

I’m not sure how you can tell what forces are driving something unless you pick one (legalization) reverse it, and see what happens, which seems extremely unlikely.

For my California NCFP friends: hope this doesn’t happen to you…(my italics). This is from an editorial in the Colorado Springs Gazette here that touches on some of the problems we are experiencing here. I personally agree with legalization, but we can’t pretend that unexpected problems don’t exist, and we need to consider that some of the massive amounts of money that this new industry is generating should be used to help (duh!).

Dave Condit, deputy forest and grassland supervisor for the Pike-San Isabel and Cimarron-Comanche National Grasslands, recently accompanied Forest Service officers on the raid of a Mexican cartel’s major grow operation west of Colorado Springs. It was among at least 17 busts of cartel operations in the past 18 months. He describes the type of operation mostly based in Mexico, before legalization made Colorado more attractive. Condit said the agency lacks resources to make a dent in the additional cartel activity in the region’s two national forests.

“It was eye opening to put on the camouflage and sneak through the woods at 4 in the morning,” Condit told The Gazette’s editorial board Friday. “I had no idea the scope of these plantations. These are huge farms hidden in the national forests. The cartels de-limb the trees, so there is some green left on them. Other trees are cut down. They fertilize the plants extensively, and not all these fertilizers and chemicals are legal in this area.

“This is different than anything we have experienced in the past. These massive plantations are not the work of someone moving in from out of state who’s going to grow a few plants or even try to grow a bunch of plants and sell them. These are massive supported plantations, with massive amounts of irrigation. The cartels create their own little reservoirs for water. These operations are guarded with armed processors. They have little buildings on site. The suspects we have captured on these grows have all been Mexican nationals.”

Condit said the black market invading Colorado’s national forests has grown so large the entire budget for the Pike and San Isabel forests would not cover the costs of removing and remediating cartel grows in the forests he helps supervise.

“There’s a massive amount of resource damage that has to be mitigated,” Condit said. “You’ve got facilities and structures that have to be deconstructed. We would need to bring in air support to get materials out of there. There are tens of thousands of plants that have to be destroyed.”

Condit hopes the Colorado Legislature will channel a portion of marijuana proceeds to the Forest Service to help pay for closure and reclamation of cartel operations.

“For every plantation we find, there are many more,” Condit said.

Authorities captured only two cartel suspects in the raid Condit witnessed, and others escaped by foot into the woods.

“This operation had a huge stockpile of food. Hundreds and hundreds of giant cans (of food), and stacks of tortillas two or three people could not consume in months,” Condit said. “So it appeared they were planning to bring in a large crew for the harvest. I wouldn’t have thought you could hide something like that in our woods, but you can.”

Officers seized a marijuana stash and plants worth an estimated $35 million that morning. Merely destroying the plants presented a significant expense.

“Whether you’re a recreational shooter, a weekend camper, or you’re going to walk your dog in the woods, you should be concerned,” Condit said. “Some of these people have guns. If you stumble into $35 million worth of illegal plants, I’d be concerned. We are concerned for our own personnel.”