Park ranger has been removed Illegal marijuana cultivation location exist CaliforniaSequoia National Park covers an area of about 13 acres (5 hectares).
exist Press release The National Park Service said Thursday it had removed a total of 2,377 adult cannabis plants and about 2,000 pounds of garbage and infrastructure last week.
Originally tested and raided by law enforcement rangers in 2024, the site also contains a semi-automatic pistol and several hazardous chemicals. The chemicals include a gallon of methyl phosphate, a highly toxic pesticide banned in the United States since 2009, NPS said.
According to the NPS, the site did not recover until this year due to the presence of hazardous chemicals. No arrests have been made and the investigation is underway.
The NP continued to identify various damages to the site, including moving natural flows in nearby creeks and installing irrigation lines, building several large pits to store transfer water from a nearby creek, cleaning up natural vegetation in large quantities, and marijuana planting that dug terraces into hillsides.
Other damages include developing campsites, kitchen areas and cultivated land in wilderness areas, evidence of poaching and illegal maintenance trails covering about two miles.
The NP notes the environmental impact of large cannabis cultivation sites in the central California valley because a Majuna plant uses six to eight gallons of water a day that would otherwise be used for other wildlife and vegetation. It also points to runoff water at sites that may be contaminated by various pesticides used to grow cannabis.
For the past two decades, drug dealers have been operating in what NPS described as “massive operations” in and around Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. Since then, nearly 300,000 plants worth nearly $850 million have been eradicated from national parks.
Although marijuana was legalized in California in 2016, strict production restrictions have led to a booming black market that has caused widespread environmental damage across the state in recent years.
exist siskiyou County, More than 15,000 acres of illegal cannabis sites have resulted in a significant drop in wildlife and the use of unregulated pesticides and chemicals.
“We went to the ground and there was really no wildlife,” Siskiyou’s director of community development at the Ministry of Environmental Health, told The Guardian in an interview last year.
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