Marijuana cultivation on state and federal lands became a major law enforcement priority and the US Forest Service, National Guard, CAMP and other cooperative task forces have taken on primary roles in conducting counter-cultivation efforts.New law enforcement objectives were established in the “Strategic Plan” which identified short-term and long-term goals, as well as the methodology “to eliminate, disrupt and dismantle the leadership, command, control, and financial infrastructure of Drug Trafficking Organizations.”The key developments within the agencies regulating marijuana cultivation were year round operations and investigations that targeted whole organizations. However, sustained operations required benchmarks for progress. Enforcement agencies would use short term results to measure progress on long term goals. Previous measures of short-term success persisted, including site location, plant eradication and cultivator arrests. However, law enforcement agencies created divisions strictly dedicated to opposing DTOs by assigning patrol officers exclusively to the issue, reassigning alternative workloads, and removing extraneous administrative duties of those in charge in order to focus the necessary resources to impact DTOs. In addition, increased funding allowed agencies around the state to begin a training and recruitment process to significantly increase staffing. In the Pacific Southwest Region of the Forest Service, the additional staff would include 1 supervisory special agent, 3 patrol captains, 18 special agents, 50 law enforcement officers, pipp drying racks and 6 administrative assistants, all of whom will be dedicated almost exclusively to marijuana control.
This will allow for long-term engagement in year round counter-cultivation efforts that utilize preventative measures as an advantage. Instead of waiting for a site to be found in July or August, agents will be able to look for and follow up on leads throughout the year. Equally important, they can identify priority cases for full investigation so they may be completed to a “reasonable conclusion.”Investigations will be prioritized based on existing intelligence, site logistics, available resources, and special public interest. The process of site review involves a methodical documentation of evidence such as cell phone contacts and the origin of supplies, which is entered into records and scrutinized for pursuable leads. Previously, useful evidence would have remained untouched at the site, or on rare occasions, kept in police storage. The potentially useful information left at sites was lost to neglect. Now, a significant portion of the evidence left behind is subjected to intelligence analysis. Increased utilization of intelligence analysis centers has made this process much more efficient and effective, which enables preventative tactics and helps governmental agencies learn about and infiltrate tight drug trafficking institutions. Governmental agencies have also changed investigation and detection strategies. While some authorities claim that there is nothing better than a helicopter and a well-trained eye, enforcement agencies are developing the use of more sophisticated techniques. These include, but are not limited to, ultraviolet, infrared, and electronic detection systems. Other techniques include night time patrols in high risk areas when cultivators may be less attentive, year-round patrols, and new detection methods such as monitoring for irrigation and cultivation supplies, comparing watershed precipitation with surveys of water flow quantities, and testing for chemical nutrient imbalances in bodies of water.
The more time that is dedicated to research and detect sites early, the less time is required to raid and eradicate each site. Raids are carefully planned efforts, designed to reach set goals while minimizing the risk to agents. First, team leaders develop a raid plan and develop logistics such as funding sources, equipment requirements and invasion methods. Agents in charge then gather a team that they brief, supply and prepare. New agents and officers are required to complete a thorough training program to learn remote raid techniques. Teams sometimes hike into sites for covert operations, but more often, they rappel down from a helicopter into the nearby area. Officers face major disadvantages when raiding sites because cultivators have been living at the location for months. Covert operations involve the most risk because hiking conditions and landscape characteristics can subject officers to ambush and provide cultivators with vantage points for armed engagement. While no officers have been fatally wounded during remote operations, there have been various cases involving gunshot wounds. During helicopter raids, cultivators generally flee from the scene while law enforcement officers are lowered into the area. While living on-site for months, cultivators develop elaborate escape routes and hiding spots. Hiding places can be as close as one hundred feet from a grow site, and are rarely found without K-9 assistance. The cultivators that are obtained are generally low-level employees with minimal knowledge about the larger organization that employs them. To complement tactical operations, government agencies have developed another significant long-term goal to develop an understanding of commercial scale, remote marijuana cultivation, within the broader public.
Regional leadership conducts public education programs by presenting PowerPoint demonstrations about DTOs at meetings, forums, and presentations for politicians, government employees, and the general public. Law enforcement organizations facilitate information sharing with the media and local contacts, and have developed “bi-lingual material to be distributed in high risk areas seeking information and offering rewards.”These programs aim to increase the awareness in an effort to increase reports of suspicious activities. When marijuana related activities are reported early, enforcement agencies gain a strategic advantage in combating individual sites. In addition, early detection allows more sites to be discovered and raided throughout the year because enforcement efforts are spread over a longer period of time. Public education creates an understanding of the consequences of marijuana production on various scales. This can provide political support for the prevention of DTO related activities in California, as well as alter patterns of marijuana acquisition and consumption within the general public. The production of potent marijuana requires intensive resource inputs to achieve high yield. This means that carefully planned and executed cultivation systems are crucial to developing quality marijuana harvests, and that cultivators manipulate the environment to optimize conditions for Cannabis plants. The widespread influence of Mexican cartels on outdoor cultivation in California causes similar processes to be performed at separate sites dispersed across large geographic distances. DTO operated grow sites have developed systematic patterns of behavior that occur with regularity and make their efforts distinct. Cultivators inhabit remote sites over long periods of time to develop plantations, and create a multitude of adverse effects in the process. Site selection is a crucial aspect of the cultivation process. DTOs often choose prospective locations long before they enter into a site. Some key elements that they look for on maps and aerial photographs are isolated water sources, slight canopy cover and adequate sunlight exposure. Sites are created in areas such as logged landscapes, conservation reserves, remote areas of national parks,pipp horticulture and other places with difficult access and visually indistinct features from a birds-eye view. These are often areas where people rarely go because entry is made difficult by physical barriers such as cliff faces, steep talus slopes, dense clusters of vegetation such as poison oak, and even man-made berms. Due to the rugged and highly vegetated condition of most prospective sites, preparing land for marijuana planting is both labor intensive and time-consuming. Laborers work long hours to provide Cannabis plants a monopolistic domination of the landscape. The dynamics of landscape alteration depend on site-specific characteristics, but many similar practices occur throughout DTO operations. During the site supply process, cultivators cut or wear trails into the landscape that weave back and forth making site access for material transport easier. In order to avoid detection, laborers try to avoid leaving evidence of their presence up to a certain point, such as a major physical barrier, after which distinct paths are worn into the ground. The sheer weight of laborers’ equipment loads combined with regular use of the trails is enough to trample and kill small vegetation.
The paths connect site entry routes to the food preparation area, sleeping area, latrine, and various marijuana plantations. One site may contain 30,000 plants, but within that site the plants are often divided up between multiple smaller plots. Laborers’ movement along the paths is responsible for the introduction and distribution of non-native plant species to new areas. Laborers accumulate and transport seeds or spores on their bodies, clothing, shoes and equipment. In the California central coast region, cultivator movement along self-created paths is cited for the spread of Sudden Oak Death syndrome in Tan Oak, Black Oak, and Coastal Live Oak trees.Studies conducted by the Santa Lucia Conservancy show that the occurrence of SOD is facilitated by remote inhabitance through transmission of the plant pathogen responsible for SOD, Phytophora ramorum. Marijuana cultivators contribute to the spread of Phytophora ramorum to uninfected oak trees and exacerbate the effects of Sudden Oak Death syndrome by moving throughout affected landscapes that are part of their widespread system of sites. Movement by any person or animal can effectively transmit this pathogen to uninfected oak trees, but cultivators navigate through these areas more frequently than other people who may pass through. Their movements are also responsible for the spread of a variety of harmful invasive species including thistles, Vinca, Periwinkle, English Ivy Yard, and others.Invasive organisms often out-compete native species because they possess adaptive characteristics and lack natural competitors when introduced in new areas, which results in widespread alterations to the food-web, nutrient cycling, fire regimes, and hydrology of otherwise well preserved ecosystems. Many attributes of remote ecosystems are not ideal for agriculture, so laborers invest much time and energy in altering land to make it suitable for Cannabis cultivation. Workers clear understory vegetation to eliminate potential competition and prepare the soil for Cannabis plantations. The cleared vegetation, referred to as “slash piles,” are discarded in stream beds, causing impediments to hydrologic flows, or used to create berms up to 8 feet tall in order to bar site access.Throughout the growing season, cultivators use chemical techniques to maximize THC content and bud production. These intensive methods change soil dynamics, nutrient levels and chemical makeup, thus creating the opportunity for a new composition of vegetation to emerge. Landscape alteration may awaken seed banks in the soil that have sat dormant for up to hundreds of years, alter the ability for some plants to re-grow because of changes in soil chemistry, destroy habitat for a variety of organisms, and have many other adverse affects on otherwise preserved ecosystems. In short, remote Cannabis cultivation forever changes the ecosystems in which it takes place. In highly mountainous areas, growers dig out terraces on hill slopes to create planting beds. In the process, soil is displaced leading to accelerated rates of hill-slope erosion. Some terrace beds are stabilized by falling trees, trimming them into logs, and inserting the logs into the terrace walls to hold the dirt in place. This is an important step to provide somewhat stable access to individual plants on steep slopes, and to prevent landslides that could destroy entire plantations. However, when these are removed, the stock of topsoil is greatly diminished. On slight grades or flat surfaces, cultivators mound soil around Cannabis stems to optimize nutrient uptake. For plantations with high percentages of gravel or sand, growers will bring in loamy soil to provide proper soil composition and nutrients. The affects of these changes on the natural environment can vary. For instance, fallen trees naturally promote the growth of under story species; however, the cutting of trees can disturb soil and impact the ecosystem services that they once provided such as habitat, nutrient cycling and moisture retention. Many land alterations remove perennial root structures that stabilize sediment causing the hillsides to lose stability and become more susceptible to small landslides and sedimentation of water sources during precipitation. Sedimentation alters water flow, reduces the capacity of water stocks, degrades the habitats of various species, and makes waters turbid – reducing the capacity for organisms to photosynthesize. Further, chemical toxins and metals bind to clay particles in fluvial sediment, are consumed by bottom feeding organisms, and bio-accumulate in higher order predators throughout the food chain. Cultivators approach land alterations with utter disregard; falling old growth trees, discarding of brush in stream beds, and littering the ground indiscriminately with waste. In sites intended for continued cultivation, laborers dig deep holes that are used to dispose of trash at the end of the harvest season in order to reduce the chances of detection between one season and the next.