Illegal marijuana farms endanger wildlife on California’s public lands
Although California legalized the cultivation and sale of recreational cannabis, illegal marijuana farming continues in the state’s federal and state parks. These grow sites use rodenticide, a type of pesticide, that harms local wildlife. Putting their safety at risk, a team of biologists and law enforcement are pushing to dismantle these unauthorized weed grow sites found in California's forests.
Read "Illegal marijuana growers poison forests—these people fight back."
Agent 1: You guys always up on what this stuff [inaudible 00:00:03]
Agent 2: I don't know.
Agent Stephen Frick, Forest Service [SOT]: So two teams coming off separate points on ridge?
Agent 3: Correct.
Agent Stephen Frick, Forest Service [Off-camera]: Is that what- okay.
Agent 3: Correct.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC [Off-camera]: Where we're at right now is what we would consider the lion's den of marijuana cultivation in California or North America.
Agent 4: Team one's ready to go.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC [Off-camera]: This is also a prime area for a lot of threatened endangered species.
Agent Stephen Frick, Forest Service [Off-camera]: There's a marijuana garden about a half mile away, and hopefully we can apprehend him.
Greta Wengert, IERC: That risk of coming into a grow that has people that are defending their crop to the end with guns. There's always a risk there.
Agent 5: Go ahead and make your team ready for entry. Start heading your way.
[Screaming} God.
Agent 6: Go.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: My name is Dr. Mourad Gabriel. I'm the co-director of a non-profit organization called Integral Ecology Research Center. Our specific mission is to generate and disseminate scientific information for wildlife managers, politicians, and other individual involved in the conservation realm.
GRETA WENGERT: We've been in this work since about 2013, looking at fisher ecology. Fisher is a mid-sized carnivore that relies on mature forests.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: They're kind of the honey badger of North America. They're pretty ferocious little guys.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: We started finding out the Pacific fishers were dying from rodenticide toxicosis, so rodenticide is a type of pesticide. And so, like, what, what's causing this? Only thing that was coming up was there was something around these forests that was placing these rodenticide out there. And it wasn't until a forest service special agent stated that "Your answer is marijuana cultivation on your public lands."
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: Emerald Triangle has been coined by marijuana cultivators as the central hub of where domestic marijuana cultivation kind of sprouted. And so that would be Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity County.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: If you get rid of wildlife, you have no conflict with it. It doesn't destroy your plants, it doesn't eat your food. That's what these suspects constantly reiterate. "I get rid of wildlife by poisoning them." Multi-year contamination of soil, poisoning terrestrial wildlife, poisoning avian wildlife. I would ask any conservationist, if that was occurring, in, and impacting threatened and endangered or sensitive species, is that a significant conservation threat? I would bet you 10 out of 10 conservationists would be like "Yes, that is. Yes, that is."
Agent Stephen Frick, Forest Service: So, from the time that we detect a site, what we'll do at that point is, uh, we'll begin investigating and starting to try identifying who's doing it through surveillance. Get as much intel as we can on 'em before we actually come in and do the raid.
Agent Stephen Frick, Forest Service [SOT]: Yeah, they're turning left here. And then the drop point's right underneath the power lines.
Agent: Yeah.
Agent Stephen Frick, Forest Service [SOT]: As reference.
Greta Wengert, IERC: In these cases, these really large grows are probably being run by a drug trafficking organization. And so they'll get whatever pesticides or fertilizer they need brought to them.
Agent [SOT]: They're gonna go in that road, so it's extremely important we stay behind these trees. They're gonna be like, I mean, they're eye level. They're gonna be looking right at us.
Agent [SOT]: We're waiting for the suspects to show up in the vehicle. Once they show up, hopefully we can apprehend them.
Interviewer [SOT]: What happens if she doesn't come tonight?
Agent Stephen Frick, Forest Service [SOT]: Uh, it sounds like we're gonna go in and get 'em.
[Screaming]
Agent [SOT]: Tyler, is the end of the camp coming up?
Agent [SOT]: You're on 'em?
Agent [SOT]: Go. Come on.
Agent [SOT]: Copy
Agent [SOT]: He's got him.
Interviewer [SOT]: Can you explain what happened real quick?
MOURAD GABRIEL: Uh, they were waiting. They saw the guys that were tending the plants and then, uh, one of the suspects were apprehended by a canine unit with his officer. And then another suspect evaded, uh, law enforcement until they can actually catch up to him and detain him.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: (Speaking Spanish)
Suspect: Nada nada.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: (Speaking Spanish)
Suspect: Nada.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: Nada? Nada? (Speaking Spanish)
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: : Says he doesn't use insecticides. Pretty surprised, but we'll find out.
AGENT: Alright. He said no carbofuran, but what we're finding is a spray bottle up there. It's got pink on the inside of the spray. There's no, uh, insecticides or pesticides that we know of that are pink other than the carbofuran.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: This is highly plausible that these are methamidophos or carbofuran that is, eh, probably dying that hose.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: Carbofuran, it takes literally quarter of a teaspoon to kill a male African lion. A 600-pound male African lion, quarter teaspoon.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: (Speaking Spanish)
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: It's very important to be there on that day. If that raid happened, and I was not there, and then I come out a week later, bears have destroyed the whole area, I'm gonna lose what the growers are actually doing.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: (Speaking Spanish)
Suspect: (Speaking Spanish)
Interviewer: How does this site compare to other ones you've seen before?
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: It's cookie cutter, man. Poison, kill, plant, poison, kill, plant. Repeat. I mean it's, I mean I hate to be so blunt and, and simplistic about it, but that's pretty much it. Poison, kill, plant.
Agent Stephen Frick, Forest Service: They were talking about bringing some of Mourad's group in from IERC to help document the site, process, you know, some samples. But because it's getting late in the evening, we'll, we'll do that environmental survey stuff more tomorrow.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: [Off-camera]: The raid happens. We go out there, document it, and then we go in there and clean it up.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: [SOT]: I'm gonna go ahead and star marking this, guys. So if you guys wanna follow me.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: Okay, whoa, what is this? I don't like that. You can see that? It almost looks like calamine lotion that's been diluted. That is a big, big, big red flag for us.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: I am going to take samples.
Agent Stephen Frick, Forest Service: Mourad's group help us so much as far as assessing the sites. They analyze the soil. They analyze the plants. They help us identify how much damage there is to the resource, and to the National Forest.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: Now, see, there's a bear puncture in this. I mean, that is a bear getting, you know, several ounces in its mouth. If it's carbofuran, that bear's done.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: This has federally been designated as critical habitat. And then we have what I call a death ring, a death pit. If that bear's raising young, now you didn't kill that sow, you killed her and maybe her two or three cubs that she's raising. That's the ramifications that people need to grasp.
Interviewer: So, how do you see the way forward after this? Do you think that pesticides are just going to continue to be this bad while you guys try to make a dent in it?
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: Oh, we're making a dent in it. Our organization is completely optimistic. There's no way we're quitting on this.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: So another 24, 14, 14, 50 pounds.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: You gotta be relentless and show no, pretty much what I say, no reclamation mercy. You clean it all up. Y-you don't give them this quarter where they can come up and set up shop anytime and re-contaminate the environment.
Greta Wengert, IERC: To go in, investigate, see the chemicals that are there, see how much trash is there, and to finally see it come out of that site. You know, sort of reversing the damage is a really, really great feeling.
IERC team member [SOT]: Copy that Falcon 97. Thank you very much, sir.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: What we do is document environmental degradation. Because what we're doing is gathering data in order to demonstrate that contamination is occurring.
Mourad Gabriel, IERC: I care about conservation. Rectifying something that us as humans are contributing towards and creating this scientific evidence so that policy makers and agency folks can make the best sound decisions. That's my main mission. It doesn't matter what species it is. It doesn't matter the topic. It's conservation. I do this work because it's a conservation issue. That's my mission.
