Pubdate: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Copyright: 2014 Hearst Communications Inc. Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1 Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388 Author: Sam Hodder Note: Sam Hodder is president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League. ILLEGAL MARIJUANA GROW SITES DESPOIL OUR NATIONAL FORESTS As public debate continues over legalizing marijuana, we need to address the effects that marijuana cultivation has on public lands, our water supply and wildlife habitat. Our society protected these places for all of us. The ability to walk among the towering 2,000-year-old giant redwoods is part of the American experience. It is unacceptable for this pervasive illegal activity to undermine that experience. Illegal marijuana operations are despoiling our forests and streams, threatening the public's enjoyment of our parks, and devastating our environment. With recreational marijuana legal in Colorado and Washington and medicinal pot available in 23 states, the market will endure. Yet we've done little to address how and where marijuana is grown. These illegal practices siphon water from waterways, threatening livelihoods in rural communities and killing wildlife, including endangered species such as coho salmon. Illegal cultivation triggers erosion, stripping land of nutrient-rich topsoils, leaving downstream land vulnerable to flooding and clogging waterways with eroded soil. Cannabis farms don't only generate trash from growers who camp near the grow sites. In addition, the farms' chemicals and pesticides damage the environment. This practice wreaks havoc on native plants, and the chemicals enter the food chain and harm wildlife. Consider these situations: - -- Woodland animals such as the fisher are dying in California's public forests from large amounts of rat poison used by marijuana cultivators to protect their seedlings. - -- Water sources may run dry this summer for 200 households on the Yurok Indian reservation in Humboldt County because of marijuana growers diverting water to pot farms. - -- Drug-trafficking suspects who tended an illegal marijuana garden in Nevada's Snake Mountains left 700 pounds of garbage that damaged an aspen grove. The site's irrigation systems stretched over 6 acres of this U.S. wilderness rangeland. More menacing, the threat of criminal violence is ruining our enjoyment of the great outdoors: People armed with guns guarding illegal grow sites are scattered throughout our public lands, endangering hikers and campers. We must act now. U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, has urged U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Melinda Haag and Washington decision-makers to lend federal support to combatting this national threat. Let them know you support allocation of federal funds and manpower to defend our national lands. Unless we take action quickly, we will unravel years of investment in our precious parklands. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom