She added that the fire only worsened longstanding worries about unregulated marijuana grows in the area and said Thursday that she could see an open-air pot farm on a ridge line across a canyon from her home. Their presence, and the violence that can accompany their maintenance, present a public-safety threat to mountain residents.
“If they think the problem is going away anytime soon, it’s not,” she said. “People just don’t get it. Only when it’s in their backyard are they going to get it.” https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/10/generator-from-pot-grow-caused-2016-loma-fire-officials-say/
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The video was first reported Saturday by the San Jose Mercury News. McNeal makes the comments just after the 6-minute mark in the video below:...Illegal marijuana grows in national parks and forests have tormented federal land managers for years. Growers hike into remote canyons with poisons and irrigation lines and set up camp for months. The poisons kill wildlife and seep into streams and creeks. The growers leave tons of garbage behind.
The three top causes of wildfire in California are equipment use, such as a lawnmower blade hitting a rock or a vehicle's malfunctioning catalytic converter, plus debris burning and arson. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/yosemite-fire-possibly-ignited-in-illegal-marijuana-grow-official-says/
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8-30-2013 In 2009 a huge fire that burned 90,000 acres in the Los Padres National Forest near Santa Barbara was set by a campfire from an illegal marijuana grow, Forest Service investigators concluded at the time. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department said the operation was run by a Mexican drug cartel. Deputies reported finding 30,000 marijuana plants and an AK-47 assault rifle in a remote canyon near where the wildfire started. They also found piles of garbage, propane tanks and a charred stove.
A few weeks after that incident, the Santa Barbara County sheriff said that the tightening of security around the U.S.-Mexico border had led to the rise in drug gangs deciding to grow marijuana on public lands in California.
“It’s made it much more difficult for the cartels to smuggle into the country, particularly marijuana, which is large and bulky,” Sheriff Bill Brown said. “It’s easier to grow it here.”...
In June, deputies pulled out 15,000 marijuana plants from the adjacent forest to the south, Sierra National Forest. The Madera County Sheriff’s Department removed four miles of irrigation pipe connected to streams and more than 2,000 pounds of garbage, propane tanks, bedding and food. A month earlier, fire crews battled a 40-acre wildfire in the same area, and authorities said it had been set by marijuana growers tied to Mexican drug cartels. https://www.mercurynews.com/2013/08/30/rim-fire-did-illegal-marijuana-growers-start-the-blaze/
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1-10-2018 The men, who were all Latino, described to the police where the farm was located, just outside a heavily forested area in California’s Calaveras County. Soon the authorities sent up a team to raid the farm. What they discovered: more than 23,000 marijuana plants producing upwards of $60 million worth of weed. They also found two women they believe were selling marijuana for the Mexican drug cartels....
Today California is the epicenter of black-market marijuana in the U.S., with over 90 percent of the country’s illegal marijuana farms. The authorities say they’re finding cartel-affiliated weed on government-owned lands in states including Oregon, Utah, Washington, Nevada and Arizona, all of which permit some form of medical marijuana. The problem has gotten so bad that in 2016, Colorado began partnering with the Mexican Consulate to bust the narcos.
Today activists in California counties such as Calaveras are pushing back, trying to ban cannabis farms to cut off the cartels. They say drug traffickers are importing automatic weapons and using illegal, highly toxic pesticides that are eviscerating forest animals and poisoning freshwater sources. “We’re going down the toilet bowl,” says Calaveras County Sheriff Rick DiBasilio, “and it’s not going to get any better.” http://www.newsweek.com/2018/01/19/mexican-drug-cartels-taking-over-california-legal-marijuana-775665.html
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This international drug trade rapes the landscape. Criminal groups who are setting up illegal marijuana grows on public and private forests and wildlands are measurably adding to the increase in crime and violence in America’s wilderness areas—even as they wreak environmental damage
The growers cultivate pot gardens with thousands of plants fed by miles of black plastic irrigation pipes that draw water from streams, mix it with illegal fertilizer and pesticides, and produce plants whose street value is now over $1,000 each.
Each plant in these gardens uses about 6-15 gallons of water per day over 150 watering days; and so a trespass grow site with 10,000 plants diverts 60,000 gallons of water per day, or 9 million gallons in a season. Little wonder that legal growers and farmers are complaining about water shortages....
California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement established CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Production) to eradicate illegal marijuana cultivation and trafficking in the state. In 2011, Operation Full Court Press—a three-week raid carried out by CAMP —netted some 632,000 marijuana plants in and around the Mendocino National Forest, with a street value in the neighborhood of $1 billion. https://thecrimereport.org/2017/08/14/fighting-drug-cartels-in-californias-emerald-triangle/
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3-24-17 According to a July 2015 report from the DEA, eight major Mexican transnational criminal groups were known to be operating in the United States. Alongside prominent players like the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, appeared a trafficking organization called Las Moicas.
3-24-17 According to a July 2015 report from the DEA, eight major Mexican transnational criminal groups were known to be operating in the United States. Alongside prominent players like the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG, appeared a trafficking organization called Las Moicas.
According to the report, the Moicas are based in the Mexican state of Michoacán and have ties to the Familia Michoacána, an organization largely displaced by its splinter group, the Knights Templar. Despite the decline of the Familia Michoacána after the death of its top leader in 2014, the Moicas group “remains a regional supplier in California and operate[s] on a smaller scale relative to other major Mexican” criminal organizations.
The Moicas’ first reported run-in with the DEA dates back to 2009, when US authorities seized 50 kilograms of heroin and $250,000 in cash, in addition to arresting several of the 21 suspects from the group later charged in connection with the seizure.
The DEA’s press release concerning the operation asserts that a total of 200 kilograms of heroin, with an estimated retail value of $17.5 million, were smuggled during the run. The group allegedly hid both drugs heading north and drug profits heading south “in elaborate vehicle engine compartments” that allowed them to cross the border undetected.
At the time, the Moicas operated solely in California, but the group has since reportedly expanded to Reno, Nevada, and it operates in some areas of California dominated by the Sinaloa Cartel, according to the DEA’s 2015 report. As of March 2016, VICE News reported, Mexican authorities had no record of Las Moicas.
Mexico’s criminal landscape has become increasingly fragmented as larger cartels continue to rely heavily on smaller groups for specialized criminal tasks and as the government continues to take down top leaders of major criminal organization. In an illustration of this dynamic, Mexican authorities stated that nine cartels — not including the Moicas — operated throughout the country as of July 2016, relying on a total of 37 criminal cells.
Within this context it appears that the Moicas may have succeeded in quietly growing by maintaining a low profile, as suggested by the absence of official acknowledgement of the group by the Mexican government as well as the scant public information available about the organization. According to the DEA spokesperson contacted by BBC Mundo, the US anti-drug agency does not even know the composition of the Moicas’ hierarchy.
It is possible that the Moicas have followed the blueprint of earlier Mexican drug trafficking organizations, such as the Xalisco Boys who achieved a striking expansion across the United States in the 1990s by investing in the heroin market while maintaining a low profile.
And it is likely that the Moicas’ rise and reported expansion has been fueled by the booming US demand for heroin. The US consumption market for this particularly addictive drug is believed to have tripled over the past decade, boosted by over-prescription of legal opioid drugs and even allegedly criminal activity by executives of some companies in the US pharmaceutical industry. https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/las-moicas-mexican-cartel-heroin-california/
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