New forest danger: Sophisticated pot farms
By Charles Ashby 
| August 27, 2009 | 7:01 AM
A drying hut made from logs was part of a marijuana-growing operation found on Colorado forest land. (Photo by U.S. Forest Service)
Lions and tigers and bears … and drug dealers. The first three things we all knew to avoid while wandering through the great outdoors, but now the U.S. Forest Service says we need to be worried about a new danger in the Colorado mountains. Oh my!
The new message to Dorothy, Toto and the rest of the public is to know what to look for if you happen upon a marijuana-growing operation while hiking yellow-brick roads or trails of any color in the high country. Then, if you find such an operation . . .
“Hike out quickly,” said Michael Skinner, special agent-in-charge for the service’s Rocky Mountain Region. “Don’t stand around. You don’t necessarily have to run, but I want you to get out quickly and just keep moving. Report it immediately to law enforcement.”
At a briefing at the Forest Service’s office in Lakewood, Skinner and service spokesman Terry McCann outlined what to look for to know if you’ve just wandered into the middle of a pot farm:
- Heavily used trails where there should be none
- Food wrappers spewed about the forest floor
- Irrigation supplies
- Granules of fertilizer
- Blue tarps
- Propane tanks
- Structures made from logs
Don’t be too concerned if you happen across one or two of these things, they said, but if there’s more — lots more — do the following: Hightail it out of there!
While Skinner and McCann stressed that federal lands in the nation are perfectly safe, they also stressed that certain parts of those lands in Colorado are not. People operating forest pot farms are there all the time. They’re armed. They’re likely to be in the state illegally. And they’re not likely to be pleased at spotting some interloper and her little dog, too.
“We don’t want to scare people. We don’t want to make it sound like we won’t say that our nation forests aren’t safe,” Skinner said. “Our goal is to not allow organizations to use foreign nationals or any other person involved in an illegal drug production to take over our national forests. I do not want to get to the point where the public is not safe to go out and use the forest. That’s what the bottom line is.”
The service has found two fairly large marijuana-growing operations in the hills west of Denver in as many months — one just north of Deckers that had more than 14,000 plants (with a street value of about $12 million), and a smaller one in the Pike National Forest found last month, which had about 5,000 plants.
Unlike pot farms discovered in years past, which Skinner and McCann described as mom-and-pop operations, these are run more professionally. Why are they suddenly there? Skinner said it may have something to do with stepped-up enforcement of the nation’s border with Mexico. As a result, it appears that drug cartels may be setting up these operations in Colorado’s backcountry and exporting their own field hands to run them.
That’s why he is warning hikers who happen to hear Spanish music while traipsing around not to be too concerned, but if they also run into empty Tecate beer cans, tortilla packages and, well, armed Mexicans, not to stick around. Oh, and call the cops as soon as you’re safe, they say.
The two farms Skinner and other law enforcement folks found this summer were highly sophisticated operations. Not only were they growing thousands of plants lined in neat rows, but they also had irrigation systems and drying huts. Evidence shows that it must have taken some time and a lot of work to establish the farms, and they’ve been there for years (investigators found store receipts that dated to 2007 at one site).
How many more farms are up there, and how dangerous it would be for some unsuspecting hiker to happen upon them, is unknown. There ave been no reports of innocent people being hurt or killed, and Skinner hopes it won’t come to that. Still, he needs help not just from the public, but the government as well. In addition to himself, 28 Forest Service agents patrol 14.5 million acres of federal land in Colorado. That averages to about half a million acres per agent.
Skinner said he had a hunch that such operations might be operating in the state but couldn’t prove it. That’s why last year he requested an additional $100,000 from the Forest Service to help finance some seek-and-destroy missions around Colorado. Now that he’s found some, Skinner hopes the federal government will allocate additional cash to finance more enforcement here.
“The best shot I have at trying to get additional money for our organization is to let them know at the Washington level that we have them (pot farms). That’s already been done,” Skinner said. “Hopefully, that will lead to them opening up the door and sending us some more money. That’s all I can do. It’s better than what we’ve done in the past.”
backcountry, hiking, marijuana farm, mountains, u.s. forest service
