Archive for the ‘environment’ tag
Guerilla growing takes toll on forests
The Fresno Bee reports on the damage to natural resources caused by outdoor cannabis crops:
Volunteers are going into the gardens to clean up trash, dead animals and pesticides to return the land as close to its original condition as possible. But it could take years for the land to recover, because little can be done once fertilizers and pesticides seep into the ground or stream beds.
George Anderson of the California Department of Justice added, “For every acre of marijuana grown, 10 acres are damaged.”
The State of California has struggled for years with so-called “guerrilla gardens”, perhaps most notably in the 1.1-million acre Sequoia National Forest, where authorities seized 10,000 plants last year. According to the National Parks Service, the Mexican cartels left a sizable chore for police and volunteers: 5,800 pounds of garbage, which included 75 propane canisters, 5.8 miles of hose, and empty containers of fertilizer, pesticide, and rodenticide.
In an underground cannabis industry, guerrilla growers have two short-sighted objectives: 1) produce as much cannabis as possible and 2) don’t get caught. They don’t care what happens to the land, because they can always find more land—especially in California, where parks make up at least 15% of the state’s land area. In the absence of long-term responsibilities that come with property ownership, it’s easy to see why the guerrilla growers burn through natural resources with such wanton neglect.
Farmers of legal substances like corn and wheat improve and preserve their land by employing crop rotation and other modern agricultural innovations and by using chemicals with caution or not at all. If cannabis were legalized, these tax-paying farmers would have the option to grow cannabis in a way that does not threaten natural resources and park visitors.
Related links:
Popularity: 7% [?]