Pubdate: Thursday, October 02, 1997 Source: San Francisco Examiner Contact: Marijuana garden By Eric Brazil OF THE EXAMINER STAFF BELL SPRING, Mendocino County This is about as far away as you can get in California: 93 miles northeast of Ukiah the last 20 miles on dirt through the Eel River's middle fork drainage then down a thousand feet through dense, trailless forest. Cell phones and radios don't work here. There are no backpackers. Bell Spring is the perfect place for an outdoor marijuana garden. On Wednesday morning, nine U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers, dressed in camouflage and packing sidearms and one AR15 rifle slipped through the woods into Bell Spring and raided a monster marijuana garden so ripe that its pungent scent was detectable 100 yards away. They made a grand haul: 2,351 fully mature, primoquality sinsemilla plants, several hundred already hung up to dry in the sun, with their thick buds oozing resin. The growers got away leaving a fortune behind. "I'm sure the growers are going to feel bad once they know we have all the dope," said Frank Packwood, law enforcement chief for the Forest Service in northwest California. "I'll bet their tears are causing erosion." Estimated street value of the marijuana that was cut, bundled and helicoptered out to be incinerated is between $6 million and $9 million. The twoacre garden, watered by plastic irrigation lines from a nameless nearby creek, fits the mold for outlaw growing remote, overlooked public land lightly managed by the Forest Service. If a deer hunter hadn't stumbled across it last week, the harvest would be nearly complete, Packwood said. It is situated amid a mixed stand of coast live oak, ponderosa pine and madrone on a relatively level patch of ground near the border of Mendocino and Trinity counties, where Mendocino National Forest meets the Yolla Bolly Wilderness Area. Packwood, who has been investigating marijuana growing and crimes for the Forest Service since 1979, said the garden was the handiwork of a real pro. "It's one of the most meticulous I've ever seen," he said. "Usually the growers leave fertilizer sacks and all sorts of trash behind." Most of the plants not hung up to dry were flourishing in black plastic grow bags, each fed by a drip irrigation line. Packwood noted that each line was secured to the grow bag by duct tape "to keep the animals from pulling it out. This wasn't any firstyear grower." Seven water timers were found in the garden along with one oscillating sprinkler painted in camouflage. While the growers adhered to model marijuana cultivation practices, they trashed the forest, which is in a scenic river corridor, by cutting down about two dozen live oaks to permit sunlight to reach the budheavy, six to eightfoot plants. Because the leaves of live oak and marijuana are nearly the same color, leaving the former as a canopy for the latter makes marijuana gardens hard to detect from the air. Forest Service law enforcement agents have had the garden under surveillance since Friday, hoping to catch one or more of the growers. But by Tuesday night they concluded that something spooked their targets, hence, Wednesday's raid. Agents still aren't quite sure what tipped off the growers, although they have a hunch that one of their unmarked vehicles may have been spotted near an old logging trail that was one of the access trails to the garden. The agents, whose jurisdiction encompasses the national forests and cases that start in the forests, were disappointed at the failure to make arrests. "Our push is to make arrests, to make cases," said Pat Lyng, the Forest Service's assistant regional special agent for law enforcement in California. "This was such a near thing. Our people are the best there is when it comes to sniffing around and finding stuff." Nevertheless, "it's a good day's work that we got that many plants out there," said Special Agent Jerry Price of Klamath National Forest. "Sometimes you get chickens, sometimes chicken feathers," said J.W. Allendorf, law enforcement supervisor for Six Rivers National Forest. The passage of Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana in California, seems to have produced the predicted increase in marijuana production at least in part because growers figure that the initiative may be used as a defense if they're caught. Forest Service agents say the size and number of marijuana gardens have increased since Prop. 215 passed. In recent years, a 2,000plant garden was a rarity, but this year several that size have been raided already. The expansion of marijuana acreage occurs at a time when the Forest Service's law enforcement cadre has shrunk about 25 percent from a high of 200 in the 1980s. At the same time, growers are showing adaptability, mobility and craftiness in siting and hiding their gardens. Shutting down the industry "is like trying to squeeze mercury," Allendorf said.