But 'gardeners' escape; pot-grow cooking fire blamed for S. Calif. wildfire
From KTVZ.COM news sources
Days after tribal police and federal agents seized 1,630 marijuana plants worth an estimated $5 million from a remote area of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, authorities in California said Sunday a more than 85,000-acre wildfire in Santa Barbara County had been traced to a cooking fire at an illegal marijuana grow.
Friday's Warm Springs raid marked the fourth time in just over two years that police have busted a major pot grow on the reservation, tied to Mexican drug gangs. The total seized - more than 32,000 plants - have an estimated value of $38.5 million, Warm Springs Police Chief Carmen Smith told The Oregonian, which was allowed to accompany the interagency raid.
"Outdoor pot seizures are common in late summer months across much of Oregon, as growers prepare to harvest one of the state's leading - although illegal - cash crops," the newspaper reported, but cannabis cultivation on the 1,019-square-mile Warm Springs Reservation and other native lands across the region "has reached epic proportions."
Smith told The Oregonian that the Mexican drug cartels have picked Northwest tribal lands because they are remote, mountainous and offer little human traffic, while police agencies on the reservations focus their slim resources on policing more populated areas.
Mexican growers have infiltrated the Warm Springs reservation by taking girlfriends who live there, scouting remote spots and setting up camps in areas that have little if any human traffic, the police chief said.
Because of that inaccessibility, tribal police have flown in Oregon Army National Guard helicopters to find marijuana grows from the air. Police spotted the one where Friday's raid occurred about a month ago and since then had kept watch on what appeared to be a group of Hispanic men tending the marijuana.
The area is so overgrown, it took police three hours to make it 500 yards to the grow site along Jefferson Creek, on the reservation's southwest corner. But the growers apparently heard them coming, and fled without being seen - even finding a hose apparently dropped in a hurry by someone who had been watering the plants.
Later in the day, a helicopter lifted three cargo nets full of marijuana plants - about a ton - out of the forest. Having been photographed and documented, they were on their way to be destroyed, said Warm Springs Det. John Webb.
As for the California case, authorities said the La Brea fire began in a cooking area of a pot farm, and believe those responsible are trying to escape the forest on foot. Their location is unknown, but authorities warned "not to approach anyone who looks suspicious but to instead contact the nearest law enforcement agency."
A statement from the Los Padres National Forest said "The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Narcotics Unit has confirmed that the camp at the origin of the fire was an illegal marijuana operation believed to be run by a Mexican national drug organization."
