Tourists who visit Sequoia National Park in California are most likely unaware of the ominous reality behind the scenic views – multimillion-dollar stands of marijuana tended by armed growers with financial ties to Middle Eastern smugglers linked to Hezbollah and other groups accused of terrorism, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
The pot fields are financed by the Mexican drug cartels that dominate the methamphetamine trade in the adjacent Central Valley, according to drug enforcement officials.
”We have a number of methamphetamine cases where we’ve made a direct connection between the Hezbollah and Mexican cartels,” Bill Ruzzamenti, director of the state’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program for the Central Valley and a former DEA agent, tells the newspaper.
The Hezbollah link to pot in the parks was established based on statements from informants and wiretaps.
Associates of the Lebanon-based terror group are suspected of smuggling large amounts of pseudo-ephedrine tablets in vehicles across the Canadian border for sale to the drug cartels in California.
The DEA and Canadian authorities arrested 65 people last month, including a number of Jordanian citizens, suspected of smuggling pseudo-ephedrine, a key ingredient of methamphetamine, bound for California.
The state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement believes Mexican drug organizations are using profits from the resale of the pseudo -ephedrine to bankroll the sharp increase in marijuana cultivation on public land. The cartels are turning to marijuana operations because the overhead is much lower than running methamphetamine labs.
Almost 60% of the marijuana plants eradicated in California last year were found on state or federal land. Marijuana cultivation in Sequoia has increased steadily over the last 10 years. However, the number of plants seized in the state’s oldest national park has jumped eight fold since 2001.
The dimensions of the problem began to unfold last fall when park officials destroyed a marijuana crop valued at nearly $150 million which was scattered over remote mountainsides. Rangers estimate the 8 tons of marijuana found then represent only about 40% of the pot being grown in the park.
The pot harvesters aren’t just tending to their plants, they’re also menacing visitors with AK-47s, killing wildlife and polluting streams and the surroundings.
”This is the most serious and largest assault on this park since we took control of the land in the 19th century,” Bill Tweed, Sequoia’s chief naturalist, told the Los Angeles Times.
Most of Sequoia’s marijuana stands are hidden in the steep Sierra Nevada foothills, although larger plots have been found a dozen miles from park headquarters.
Dennis Burnett, Park Service law enforcement administrator in Washington, says drug operators target state or federal land because there are too few rangers to patrol vast parks. Sequoia and adjacent Kings Canyon National Park are managed as one park encompassing 1,350 square miles.
Rangers will be stretched thin this summer, searching for marijuana crops and taking care of visitors during the park’s busiest season.
Mexican nationals, who are paid as much as $4,000 a month in cash, pile out of vehicles on a road along the southwest border of the park and head for the hills to establish camps and prepare the land for planting.
The camps have been found strewn with bags of fertilizer, beer cans and other garbage.
”Nice, eh?”, Al DeLaCruz, Sequoia’s chief law enforcement officer, said to the reporter from the Times.
”Welcome to your national park.”
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