The outdoor cultivation of cannabis includes draining and polluting streams, degrading watersheds, poisoning the environment, killing wildlife, and threatening investigators.
In California, illegal cannabis is being grown on thousands of acres of national and state forests and parks, including Stanislaus National Forest adjacent to Yosemite National Park in Calaveras County.
Siskiyou County is in the Shasta Cascade region along the Oregon border. The county is the site of the central section of the Siskiyou Trail, which runs between California’s Central Valley and the Pacific Northwest. The Siskiyou Trail followed Native American footpaths and was extended by Hudson’s Bay Company trappers in the 1830s. Its length was increased by the “Forty-Niners” during the California Gold Rush.
Illegal marijuana is often controlled by the same drug lords, cartels, and gangs who sell cocaine, heroin, and opioids. These growing operations are often tended by immigrants who are trafficked and used as slaves, guarded with high-powered weapons as the thugs protect their compounds.
Cannabis cultivation, legal and illegal, is polluting the environment.
Legal and illegal growers use large amounts of pesticides, insecticides, toxic spray glue, and other chemicals and fertilizers banned in the U.S.
Some growers illegally divert streams and discharge polluted waste into waterways, thereby poisoning the water supply, fish, and animals.
Growers clear-cut trees and excavate forests illegally, thereby creating fragmentation, stream modification, soil erosion, and landslides that reduce wildlife habitats. ESPM
Several years of droughts combined with illegal commercial cannabis growth is causing ground water to dry up. The growers steal water from neighboring wells and water truck daily deliveries. Farmers and ranchers are unable to produce their goods without adequate water. Homeowners’ wells are drained with their property left contaminated.
In May of 2008, approximately 1000 gallons of red diesel overflowed from an indoor marijuana grower’s fuel room into a creek in Humboldt County. The grower had left a valve open when pouring a larger diesel tank into a smaller one. The environmental cleanup was a massive operation, the damage of which rivaled the impact of an oil spill in the ocean. (See https://kymkemp.com/2009/10/08/the-aftermath-of-hacker-creek/.)
In 2015, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reported that marijuana growers were forcing Coho salmon, native to the area, into extinction. It was also true in Oregon https://www.theunion.com/news/local-news/fish-and-wildlife-scientists-publish-report-detailing-effect-of-water-diversions-for-pot-grows/article_f75b438e-eb1d-5ce4-aaa9-461f8eb485ed.html https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2014/09/water_use_for_marijuana-growin.html
The pesticides and rodenticides found on cannabis sites in Calaveras County included: Carbofuran (banned in the USA), Tropicote, ammonium sulfate, Diamond Nectar humic acids/phosphates, Snow Storm Ultra potassium supplement, Sonic Bloom with vitamin B1, butane Romeo fertilizer, unknown rodent killers, Mighty Growth Enhancer, pH down phosphoric acid, ammoniacal nitrogen, Massive Bloom Formulation, Emerald Goddess, liquid insect killing soap, BioRoot, and miscellaneous bulk fertilizers.
“As the other dogs attack the bait dog, the attack dog is shot and killed.” In Shasta and Siskiyou counties, drug gangs place “bait dogs” in marijuana growing operations tied to posts, so that other drug dealer dogs will be attracted to attack the helpless dogs, which have their mouths wired shut. As the other…