Illegal marijuana farms continue to endanger California’s national forests, spreading banned, toxic pesticides, and the people operating them are getting bolder, CNN reports.
The growing sites are run by Mexican cartels who are diverting the local water supply, siphoning water from creeks and rivers, and using toxic chemicals that are banned in the U.S. to kill native plants and trees, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, McGregor Scott.
"This is not a bunch of people growing marijuana in the woods," he said at a press conference on Tuesday. "This is people who are using chemicals and causing manifest environmental damage to a crown jewel of the United States -- our federal public lands."
Growers tend to be armed, having confronted hikers and drug-sniffing dogs with knives, and have been known to lay traps, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Some claim affiliation with the Mexican cartels Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación, according to Bill Ruzzamenti of the Central Valley California High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program.
Despite receiving $2.5 million from the Trump Administration to combat illegal growing operations, California National Guard Maj. Gen. David Baldwin said that the state has had a "tremendous uptick and increase in the amount of environmental damage and degradation that's done by the growers, that have become bolder and bolder to take the public lands."
Carbofuran, a banned pesticide that can seep into soil and water, killing plants, wildlife, and possibly humans, was found at more than three out of four illegal marijuana grow sites.
"Growing marijuana on federal public lands is, and has always been, illegal, and the destruction it wreaks on the environment must be stopped," Scott said in a statement released Tuesday.
"Our national parks and forests are priceless treasures held in trust for the public to enjoy for generations to come," he continued. "But these assets are being destroyed by criminal organizations that cultivate millions of marijuana plants on these lands each year for profit. The growing scientific evidence showing the depth and scale of this destruction to the forests, wildlife and waterways is a wake‑up call that we must heed."
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