Wild West: Drug cartels thrive in US national parks

One ranger, who asked to remain anonymous, marveled at "how impossible this is to find from above. There is no other way to find [it] except on foot. And we don't have the staff or resources to ... scour these regions." Rangers say that cartels hire illegal immigrants to work and live in the camps, probably for months on end. They use public roads to access parks by night, scurry into the underbrush with supplies, and lug goods up steep hillsides by moonlight.

One advantage for authorities is that they believe marijuana grows best at elevations of 3,000 to 5,000 feet, eliminating most of the park's 15 million acres as optimal sites. Still, that leaves 100 square miles to monitor in Sequoia.

"Law enforcement is spread thin already," says Mr. Barna. Parks and memorials nationwide are transferring 200 rangers - mostly from Western parks - to help meet the general security demands of the summer surge in tourism. Nor does policing the park system come cheaply: The recent terror-alert switch from Code Yellow to Code Orange cost the Park Service $63,500 a day.

And the forces left behind are stretched ever thinner. DeLaCruz says he spends a significant portion of his time on the marijuana battle, and two rangers accompanying him on a recent day say their time for other duties, from search and rescue to interpretive work, is dwindling. "There are people all over the park who want to find a ranger for all the usual reasons, from historical questions to what kind of flora and fauna they are seeing," says one. "It's sad that we are frequently out of sight for them, because we're off chasing marijuana growers."

Given the growth of marijuana farming in national parks over the past decade, officials fear the problem will worsen before it improves. "The whole trend is that these groups are moving around more and head[ing] to areas which are more populated," says Laura Mark, an agent for the US Forest Service. "They are going after public land meant for families, where they threaten people and cause untold damage. And they don't care because they are making more money than [most] will see in a lifetime."

Marijuana growers keep themselves heavily armed, officials say - partly out of worry about rival growers, partly because the street value of marijuana can be so high. Several shootouts have erupted between growers and law enforcement. A hunter and son were shot in El Dorado County recently, and a hunter was killed two years ago in Butte County. Last year, officers were shot in Tehama and Glenn counties in the Central Valley. "One of our primary concerns is for our employees," says Sequoia's Mr. Tweed.

Officials say public exposure is one of the only solutions. They hope more citizens will pressure lawmakers for funding and personnel to stop covert cultivation, in part so that perpetrators' fears of capture might curtail the activity. Though park officials are reluctant to reveal the number of staff assigned to ferret out marijuana plots, estimates at Sequoia are in the dozens. For the clearing of debris and plants, the Park Service has had to rely on other organizations, from the National Guard to the California Highway Patrol to the Tehama County Sheriff, using up to 60 people per operation.

"This is everyone's problem," says Tweed. "It's not just a question of the moral and legal issue of marijuana. It's an issue of commercial-sized agriculture devastating the mission of national parks to preserve land ... for generations.

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