Sequoia National Forest, California: Not far from Yosemite's waterfalls and in the middle of California's redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering US public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.
Source: AP
- Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tonnes of pot a year.
- "Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they've gone to mega, monster gardens," said Brent Wood, a supervisor for the California Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.
- He said Mexican traffickers have "supersized" the marijuana trade.
- Interviews conducted with law enforcement officials across the country showed Mexican gangs are largely responsible for a spike in large-scale marijuana farms over the last several years.
- Local, state and federal agents found about a million more pot plants each year between 2004 and 2008, and authorities say an estimated 75 per cent to 90 per cent of the new marijuana farms can be linked to Mexican gangs.
- In 2008 alone, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, police across the country confiscated or destroyed 7.6 million plants from about 20,000 outdoor plots.
- Growing marijuana in the US saves traffickers the risk and expense of smuggling their product across the border and allows gangs to produce their crops closer to local markets.
- Distribution also becomes less risky. About the only risk to the Mexican growers, experts say, is that a stray hiker or hunter could stumble onto a hidden field.
- The remote plots are nestled under the cover of thick forest canopies in places such as Sequoia National Park, or hidden high in the rugged-yet-fertile Sierra Nevada Mountains. Others are secretly planted on remote stretches of Texas ranch land.
- All of the sites are far from the eyes of law enforcement. Farmers of these fields use illegal fertilisers to help the plants along, and use cloned female plants to reduce the amount of seed in the bud that is dried and eventually sold.
- Mexican gang plots can often be distinguished from those of domestic-based growers, who usually cultivate much smaller fields with perhaps 100 plants and no security measures.
- Growers once slept among their plants, but many of them now have campsites up to a mile away equipped with separate living and cooking areas.
- "It's amazing how they have changed the way they do business," Wood said. "It's their domain."
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