One of the major winners in Tuesdays California vote has been largely ignored: mother nature. An important consequence of the passage of Proposition 64: The Adult Use of Marijuana Act, isnt simply that it legalizes the recreational use of the once-prohibited drug. Its that one of its carefully crafted provisions – which led me to vote for Prop. 64 – is designed to protect thousands of acres of forested public and tribal land, home to the Pacific fisher and salmon-rich rivers. Legalizing marijuana is a significant first step in repairing the devastating impact that illegal marijuana growth has had on some of the Golden States most beautiful terrain.
Indeed, the states wildlands will be one of the earliest beneficiaries of Prop. 64s passage: 20 percent of the new tax revenue that legalization will generate – and the California Department of Finance estimates the total could be as much as $1 billion – will be dedicated to preventing and alleviating environmental damage from illegal marijuana production. But how did nature fall victim to illegal marijuana growth?
In the early 1970s the Nixon administrations militarized commitment to stop the flow of marijuana into the United States led south-of-the-border cartels to shift their criminal operations north. In response to the Nixonian crackdown, and its successful cross-border interdiction campaigns, cartels began targeting Californias wildlands, from the mountains surrounding Los Angeles to the Emerald Triangle along the north coast, turning the latter into the largest cannabis-growing region in the country.
The relocation of illegal marijuana growth sparked a four-decade-long war in the woods. Its opening salvos have been unleashed every winter when the cartels send their conscripted crews – often undocumented, vulnerable fall guys – up canyons, creeks and foothills in search of hidden locales. They cut down trees, leaving enough canopy to camouflage their illicit activities; clear the ground manually with herbicides; and lay out waterlines, build dams and dig up the soil before planting thousands of cannabis seeds.
Within weeks the marijuana is growing, fed with diverted streamflow and fertilizers, and protected from predators by the thick application of pesticides and other toxicants. These hazardous chemicals, when combined with the 58,955 pounds of camp trash and other pollutants, the 453,000 plants, and 49 miles of plastic piping that the state reported it removed from wildland grow sites between January and August 2016 alone, are a disturbing reflection of the devastation of such iconic places as the Trinity-Shasta, Los Padres and San Bernardino national forests.
Consider these numbers from a single raid in 2014 on the San Bernardino National Forest:
Pounds of infrastructure removed: 22,020; feet of waterlines: 45,331; restricted poisons: 99 ounces; pounds of fertilizer: 2,270; common pesticides: 14 gallons; 20-pound propane bottles: 28; 16-ounce propane bottles: 58; car batteries: 13; dams/reservoirs removed: 7.
Officers from the California Department of Justices Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP) and the U.S. Forest Services LEI team uprooted, tore down, and hauled out this often dangerous material. They also managed to destroy 114,095 marijuana plants spread over 21 plantations, tough work on very rough terrain and under quite difficult circumstances.
This is but one forest. At the same time, strike forces were also active in the Cleveland National Forest (nine grows yielding 16,579 plants), the Angeles National Forest (27 sites budding with 76,400 plants) and the Los Padres National Forest (where they destroyed a bumper crop of 181,139 plants on 60 sites – the worst record in the state). As disturbing as this data is, know that the reality in these four national forests is much worse: given the difficulty in detecting these illegal sites, hidden by tree canopies and only accessible by climbing up rugged and steep landscapes, officers can only make a small dent in the growing operations.
Add to that accounting the collateral damage – including the Pacific fisher, a weasel-like mammal, along with small rodents and birds of prey (and their prey) whose toxic-laced carcasses have been found during eradication raids. Factor in, too, the upstream diversions that have drained the Eel River and other creeks, disrupting salmon runs. The cartels have been laying waste to the land so they might get filthy rich and others sky-high.
Prop. 64s passage will not immediately halt this harvest of shame. The transition to a fully regulated, taxed marijuana industry will take time to establish, as it has in Washington, Oregon and Colorado, which legalized marijuana prior to California. But California will be the largest experiment yet, and will provide a huge boost to national legalization efforts. If so, I hope those states following Californias lead will replicate its regulation underwriting landscape restoration to their marijuana legalization efforts.
The new tax revenue that marijuana legalization will generate in California will be money well spent, leading to the regeneration of thousands of acres of public and tribal lands and the critical biodiversity they sustain – a dope form of earth justice.
News Moderator: Katelyn Baker
Full Article: Legalizing Marijuana Will Green Up Calfornia Forests
Author: Char Miller
Contact: 818-713-3000
Photo Credit: Dan Pelle
Website: Los Angeles Daily News
