{"id":15181,"date":"2019-04-18T17:32:53","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T17:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/?p=15181"},"modified":"2019-12-16T20:16:05","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T20:16:05","slug":"marijuana-an-environmental-buzzkill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/2019\/04\/marijuana-an-environmental-buzzkill\/","title":{"rendered":"Marijuana: An Environmental Buzzkill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illegal pot growers have turned public lands into industrial agricultural sites. And the ecosystem effects are alarming.<\/span><\/h4>\n

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Research ecologist Mourad Gabriel is one of the few scientists studying illegal grow sites in California\u2019s overrun national forests.<\/span><\/p>\n

On a hot August morning, Mourad Gabriel steps out of his pickup onto the gravel road that winds up the side of Rattlesnake Peak. Dark-bearded and muscular, the research ecologist sports a uniform of blue work clothes, sturdy boots and a floppy, Army-style camo hat. He straps on a pistol. \u201cJust to let you know,\u201d Gabriel says, sensitive to the impression the gun makes, \u201cit\u2019s public land, so I open-carry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another 100-degree day is promised. Gabriel and his four field assistants are headed to work in California\u2019s Plumas National Forest, a few hours\u2019 drive from Lake Tahoe, at the northern terminus of the Sierra Nevada. The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has enlisted Gabriel to assess the scars from rampant marijuana cultivation. Today\u2019s field site: an illegal marijuana plantation known as the Rattlesnake Grow.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabriel doesn\u2019t take chances because he\u2019s been threatened personally. In 2014, someone poisoned his family dog with a pesticide that\u2019s used at the grow sites. The intruder crept onto Gabriel\u2019s property at night and scattered poisoned meat in his backyard. And last year during raids on plots elsewhere in California, two police dogs were stabbed by men fleeing the scene.<\/span><\/p>\n

So whenever Gabriel enters a cultivation site with his research team \u2014 even one that\u2019s been abandoned, as this one is \u2014 he always goes in first.<\/span><\/p>\n

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U.S. Forest Service officers collect coils of plastic pipe used to divert water from springs to marijuana plants at an illegal grow site on public lands.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of the U.S. domestic marijuana supply is raised in California. Some pot is grown on private property for legal use by medical marijuana patients. These operations can be monitored, and with Californians having legalized recreational pot last November, the regulation is sure to tighten. But in popular pot-growing regions like Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties \u2014 closer to the Northern California coast in the so-called Emerald Triangle \u2014 environmental regulation has been slow to catch up. Commandeering streams, growers divert the water into high-tech greenhouses, to the detriment of the aquatic life lower in the drainage, including the threatened coho salmon. Biologists for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife have shown that thirsty marijuana plantations can dry up water sources.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the rest of the crop \u2014 the vast black-market portion \u2014 is planted on public or tribal lands by people who ignore the environmental consequences of their activity. When they\u2019re captured, some turn out to be Mexican drug cartel workers, and others come from smaller independent groups. U.S. authorities concede that the great majority of these \u201ctrespass grows\u201d are never detected. Even after sites are cleared, the shadowy growers may reclaim them the next year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe public doesn\u2019t understand the industrial scale of this,\u201d says wildlife biologist Craig Thompson.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if you have heard anything about streams being polluted or animals and birds being poisoned by marijuana production, it\u2019s almost certainly because of Gabriel, a soft-spoken scientist who now and then unleashes his inner Rambo.<\/span><\/p>\n