Testifying before the US Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control On December 7, 2011, US Forest Service Chief David Ferrell stated that in 2011 “Marijuana cultivation occurred on 67 National Forests in 20 states.” And this is just a drop in the bucket. Large marijuana gardens are also found on BLM, US National Park, state and regional parks and state and national Wildlife Refuges. A far cry from the “hippie gardens” of the 60’s and 70’s, today’s pot gardens on public lands are thousands of plants and almost entirely the work of international drug cartels.

These gardens wreak havoc on the land, fish and wildlife, with heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides, growers poaching wildlife and damming and diverting streams. A thousand plants consume 5000 gallons of water a day, and the typical garden is 10-20 acres. Also, the growers, who live with the gardens 24/7 from April through October, are all armed, and the gardens are often booby-trapped, turning the woods into a war zone as recreationists and state and federal land managers are threatened, chased out of the woods, and sometimes shot. Sometimes people who do venture into the woods find bodies buried in shallow graves, apparently the result of wars between different cartels.