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Rangers in combat gear battle the growing marijuana industry in Sequoia

By Diana Marcum | The Fresno Bee | June 18, 2004


SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK -- Scrub jays chatter, summer-blue sky is the backdrop for granite cliffs and campers are rustling up breakfast. Just a half-mile away are camouflaged rangers carrying M-16 rifles and calling cards -- little placards with a sketch of a marijuana plant crossed through with a red line.


The point man, the one they call "Rabbit," gives a briefing:

Watch out for poison oak and rattlesnakes, he warns. He goes over hand signals for "bad guy" and "bad guy with gun" (pointing and pointing as if holding a trigger). And he tells the small group they can go slow and enjoy the scenery as they search for a reported marijuana garden they suspect is watched over by armed guards.

"No testosterone here. We're the Park Service. We're into mountains and butterflies and trees."

This summer, park rangers in Sequoia are putting their own stamp on drug enforcement. Large-scale marijuana plantations that Drug Enforcement Administration agents suspect are linked to Mexican drug cartels have moved into the national parks. Rangers and federal agents say that this park -- home to the biggest trees on Earth -- has the biggest problem.

Sequoia rangers are out-manned, out-gunned, out-financed and ready to try anything, including what looks like a cardboard coaster imprinted with a universal no-pot symbol.

"This early in the season the plants aren't worth what they'll be at harvest. If we start now, maybe we can scare them off," says the National Parks special agent in charge of law enforcement in Sequoia. He asked not to be identified by name because of his work with drug organizations.

His idea is to creep into gardens unseen and leave the card as a message saying: "We know you're here; take it someplace else." Where they find plants, they'll pick them while they're small and a few rangers can pluck out a garden.

By fall, the marijuana plants in the 40 to 60 suspected gardens within Sequoia's borders will be 10 feet tall and worth up to $4,000 apiece, he says. Growers will bring in more workers and more guards with AK-47s. The Park Service will coordinate multiagency raids with helicopters and scores of officers to cut the bamboo-size plants. But for now, in dozens of plantations hidden on protected lands, small camps of men are living in remote areas, poaching bear and deer, piling up trash and putting fertilizer in drainage areas that flow into Sequoia's wild rivers, while they water plants a few months old.

Three rangers will be tracking and watching and leaving calling cards. They'll be monitoring roads, trying to intercept food and supply drop-offs. They'll try to make the marijuana growers leave.

Drug-guard encounters

Marijuana production in Sequoia went big-time after 9/11.

Federal agents say that when security tightened at the U.S. borders it became tougher to transport drugs. Some drug traffickers moved their plantations stateside.

Park Service rangers and other law-enforcement agents pulled nearly 19,000 marijuana plants out of Sequoia last September at harvest time. They found a total of 27,000 marijuana plants in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks last year, says Sequoia spokeswoman Alexandra Picavet.

"These aren't mom and pop. This is full-scale agriculture in a national park," says the special agent. "They're terracing the earth, dumping chemicals in the river and threatening visitors."

His biggest worry is that unsuspecting visitors will cross paths this summer with armed guards the growers hired.

It's already happened.

Usually it's the fishermen. They're the ones who go off trail, staking out remote, lonely spots next to the water -- the same type of spots drug growers favor.

Two summers ago, a fly fisherman told rangers he was held at gunpoint by armed guards. He talked his way out.

Later the same summer, a fly fisherman saw armed men in camouflage and took another trail, only to find himself in a garden with marijuana plants as far as he could see. He quickly backtracked to his car, but the buddy he was supposed to meet there was gone.

A group of armed rangers went into the forest to find the man's friend before he crossed paths with the guards. They crept through the trees and, when they heard noise, zeroed in, rifles aimed.

"The guy was just sitting there waiting for his friend. He must have been surprised to suddenly have park rangers pointing M-16s at him," says ranger Dave Walton, who was on the rescue mission.

Two months ago, a Forest Service owl researcher passed an armed guard. The guard and the researcher pretended they didn't see each other and made no eye contact.

"Thank God she wasn't in uniform," Picavet says. "As soon as she was out of sight she radioed in."

Two weeks ago, researchers searching for caves found irrigation hose in an area close to a family campsite.

On this early summer day, rangers are searching for a suspected pot garden. Irrigation hose in a national park usually means a marijuana plantation is nearby. Rangers don't irrigate trees.

M-16s in sacred lands

The special agent and Rabbit, a 31-year-old seasonal ranger, are in camouflage and carrying automatic rifles. Another ranger, Tim, 30, is dressed like a tourist. He'll watch the road for suppliers, or incoming threats. These three are Sequoia's primary drug team. A DEA agent and an analyst for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Association are going along as observers. None want their full names in print because of their work with drug organizations.

They rub jungle juice -- a strong bug repellent that soldiers used in the Vietnam War -- over their faces to fend off ticks and mosquitoes.

They cross Swinging Bridge, where the Middle and Marble Forks of the Kaweah River meet, a popular route with park visitors.

"I wonder what people think when they pass us?" the special agent asks.

He's afraid it's getting to the point at which combat gear in a protected place of beauty doesn't seem out of place.

Two weeks ago, Tim was still in commando clothing after a mission when a group of visitors asked him for directions without batting an eye at his rifle or fatigues.

"Is the whole society so looped up on action movies that it doesn't register?" the special agent asks. "To me a national park, drug cartels, rangers with M-16s -- it doesn't go. These are sacred lands."

The special agent, 47, is new to Sequoia. After spending years in the National Park Service's Oakland office as a regional investigator "more worried about paper cuts than blisters," he wanted back in the field.

But this isn't the kind of fieldwork he wants to have to do.

"I'm worried about my rangers. I'm worried about me. This is a burden I wish I didn't have. But we have no choice. We can't just let people willy-nilly do large-scale agriculture in a national park. The impact is enormous. The threat's enormous."

The special agent says if the group passes hikers before disappearing into the brush, he'll tell them why rangers are carrying automatic rifles.

"I'll tell them the truth: 'Just a short distance from this trail is a pot garden and guns.' People have to know it's here. They have to know if they see irrigation hose or anything else that doesn't belong, 'Turn around, get out.' "

He's particularly worried about this garden so close to a campsite.

"We have to go in immediately because of the threat to the public," the special agent says. "What if kids start exploring off trail?"

But in Sequoia, even a few feet off the trail can mean foreboding terrain. They hike across the side of a hill that slopes steeply down to the churning river. Soon they are in brush thick as a wall.

They get to the top of the ridge by crawling on their stomachs along a trail a bear broke through the brush. The next day Rabbit will be covered with a poison oak rash.

Working their way down from the ridge, the special agent slips and slides about 10 feet down a rocky slope.

They find old bologna wrappers in miserable terrain where any hiker or backpacker would be unlikely to go. They find cut-back forest and scarred earth. The special agent is convinced there was a camp and at least three separate gardens here last season But so far this year, there's no planting in this drainage area. The special agent posts a no-marijuana card on a tree, hoping it will help it stay that way.

Two hours later they stumble back out to Swinging Bridge. Kayakers are resting at the bottom of the falls below the bridge. They watch camouflaged men with rifles come out of the forest.

Building connections

This week, the DEA opened a case on drug trafficking in Sequoia. An agent says they're after the bosses. They're trying to follow the money and build connections and cases. They're waging a decades-old war on drugs.

Every arrest the rangers make will be passed to the DEA as a piece of a bigger puzzle, including their arrest last week of 36-year-old Jose Ochoa on suspicion of working as a supplier for illegal marijuana farms within Sequoia.

Ochoa had 400 pounds of tortillas, limes, beer, fertilizer and a .22 rifle.

As the drug agencies investigate traffickers and cartels, the rangers will concentrate on their mission: protecting the land and its visitors.

"For us, it's not even that it's marijuana. If it was tea leaves, we'd feel the same way," Rabbit says. "Whatever someone thinks about the war on drugs, growing on a national park crosses the line."

Sequoia rangers say they take the invasion of drug growers in their park personally.

"These are lands we as a people said we would hold as our ideal. It's sacrilege to grow marijuana here," says Walton, a subdistrict ranger.

"To me it's like they're selling crack in the Vatican."

The reporter can be reached at dmarcum@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6375.

__________________
"I believe in the near future, the government will use anti-drug hysteria to set up a police state."
-author William S. Burroughs, 1947

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AlucardOrange3

I agree with some of what this guy has to say, and this line in particular resonates:

"For us, it's not even that it's marijuana. If it was tea leaves, we'd feel the same way," Rabbit says. "Whatever someone thinks about the war on drugs, growing on a national park crosses the line."

I get criticized a lot for being a "tree-hugger", but forgive me if I'd rather not sacrifice my planet for someone's profit motive. I personally love marijuana, but I'd rather it be grown in someone's house or in a field somewhere that doesn't cause a lot of damage. Tearing up the rainforest in Colombia to grow coca crops is wrong and tearing up the Sequoia forest in California to grow weed is wrong too.

I suppose I don't need to point out that if marijuana was a legal crop then nobody would bother tearing up a National Park to plant a spot o' the old ganja...

AO3

iGame3D

Although DEET bug repellants seem to be fairly safe, check out some of the
possible side effects Consider these guys are probably wearing this stuff on their flesh every day. Fighting drugs with drugs.

How very third world, welcome to The United States of Afghanistan.
Whats next?

Thank the slime in Washington who passed and continue to maintain barbarian drug laws, making a world wide common weed so profitable.
They should take their cammoflaged faces , fatigues and M-16's to their back yards and estate grounds, give the bueracrats a good look at the monster our government has made.

Poison oak, poison ivy, poison sumac, and several other varieties of poisonous plants are perfectly legal.
These plants can actually be used for terrorism, burning them will make anyone inhaling the smoke sick with the oils from the plant, applying the oils to materials or surfaces will get people sick. Is there a single dime spent on getting rid of these plants? NOPE, they make the drug companies a few million in profits every year. The real narco-terrorists who corrupt our government with their $96 million dollar a year lobbying.

When will the government wake up and smell the cannabis?