Law enforcement raided the illegal cannabis operation in Shasta-Trinity National Forest months before, but rotting potatoes still sat on the growers\u2019 makeshift kitchen worktop, waiting to be cooked. <\/p>\n
Ecologist Greta Wengert stared down the pockmarked hillside at a pile of pesticide sprayers<\/a> left behind, long after the raid. Wild animals had gnawed through the pressurized canisters, releasing the chemicals inside. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re just these little death bombs, waiting for any wildlife that is going to investigate,\u201d said Wengert, co-founder of the Integral Ecology Research Center, a nonprofit that studies the harms caused by cannabis grows on public lands<\/a>. For all her stoic professionalism, she sounded a little sad. <\/p>\n For over a decade, Wengert and her colleagues have warned that illegal cannabis grows like this one dangerously pollute California\u2019s public lands <\/a>and pristine watersheds, with lasting consequences for ecosystems, water and wildlife. <\/p>\n Now, they\u2019re sounding another alarm \u2014 that inadequate federal funding, disjointed communication, dangerous conditions and agencies stretched thin at both the state and federal levels are leaving thousands of grow sites \u2014 and their trash, pesticides, fertilizers and more \u2014 to foul California\u2019s forests.<\/a> <\/p>\n Dozens of fertilizer bags wept blue fluid onto the forest floor. Irrigation tubes snaked across the craters of empty plant holes. The cold stillness felt temporary \u2014 as if the growers would return at any moment to prop up the crumpled tents, replant their crop and fling more beer cans and dirty underwear into the woods. <\/p>\n Wengert has tallied nearly 7,000 abandoned sites like this one on California\u2019s public lands. It\u2019s almost certainly an underestimate, she said. Her team knows of only 587 that have been at least partly cleaned up. <\/p>\n No government agency can provide a comprehensive count; several referred CalMatters back to Wengert\u2019s nonprofit for an unofficial tally. <\/p>\n Most of the sites Wengert\u2019s team identified are in national forests, where \u201climited funding and a shortage of personnel trained to safely identify and remove hazardous materials\u201d are driving a backlog in cleanups, a U.S. Forest Service spokesperson told CalMatters via an unsigned email. <\/p>\n The federal government, the spokesperson said, has dedicated no funding for the forest service to clean them up. And it\u2019s leaving a mess in California. <\/p>\n A new playbook<\/p>\n The federal government owns nearly half<\/a> of the more than 100 million acres in California. But it\u2019s California\u2019s agencies and lawmakers taking the lead on tackling the environmental harms of illegal grows \u2014 even as the problem sprawls across state, federal and privately managed lands. <\/p>\n The California Department of Fish and Wildlife\u2019s policy is to clean up all grows spotted on its 1.1 million acres<\/a> of wildlife areas, ecological reserves, and other properties, officials say. <\/p>\n Staff assist with cleanups on federal lands \u201cwhen asked,\u201d said cannabis program director Amelia Wright \u2014 typically on California\u2019s dime. But, she said, \u201cThat\u2019s not our mandate.\u201d <\/p>\n Fees and taxes on California\u2019s legalized cannabis market fuel state efforts \u2014 supporting the California Department of Fish and Wildlife\u2019s cannabis program and funding tens of millions of dollars in grants for rehabilitating places damaged by cultivation. These grants can cover<\/a> cleanups and sustainable cultivation projects, or even related efforts such as fish conservation<\/a>.<\/p>\n The department has helped remove almost 350,000 pounds of trash and more than 920 pesticide containers from grows on public lands over nearly a decade. <\/p>\n But former Assemblymember Jim Wood<\/a>, a North Coast Democrat, said that as he prepared to leave office in 2024, progress on cleanups was still too slow.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t reflect what I see is the urgency to watersheds, and the water and the people that are served by them,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n In 2024, lawmakers passed Wood\u2019s bill<\/a> directing the Fish and Wildlife Department to conduct a study to inform a statewide cleanup strategy for cannabis grows. The law requires the department to provide regular reports to the Legislature about illegal cultivation and restoration efforts on lands both public and private. <\/p>\n To Wright, that\u2019s a path forward, however prospective it may be. <\/p>\n \u201cIt just feels like such redemption right now for many of us,\u201d Wright said. \u201cIt\u2019s a one-of-a-kind program. So we didn\u2019t have a playbook \u2014 we\u2019re still creating it.\u201d <\/p>\n But the study, which Wengert\u2019s organization is conducting on the state\u2019s behalf, isn\u2019t due until next year. Meanwhile, the bloom of illicit pot grows on private land<\/a> has been demanding California\u2019s attention, a growing problem since voters legalized cannabis in 2016. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like whack a mole. They pop up in a new location, and then we have to go there \u2014 but the impacts are occurring across the landscape,\u201d said Scott Bauer, an environmental program manager with the Department of Fish and Wildlife\u2019s cannabis office. <\/p>\n The California Department of Justice told CalMatters it recently identified a \u201csubstantial increase of illicit cannabis cultivations on or adjacent to public lands.\u201d Of the 605 sites where a multiagency state and federal task force<\/a> ripped out illicit cannabis plants, roughly 9% were on public lands \u2014 up from an average of 3% to 4%. <\/p>\n \u201cEverybody thought with legalization that a lot of these problems would go away,\u201d said Wood, the former Assembly member. <\/p>\n But, he added, the sites remain. \u201cIt\u2019s a ticking environmental time bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n And the contamination, new research confirms, lingers. <\/p>\n \u2018This site will sit on this landscape\u2019<\/p>\n On a cold November morning, down one dirt road and up another, ecologist Mourad Gabriel led a safety briefing at the grow site in Shasta-Trinity National Forest. <\/p>\n Gabriel, who previously spearheaded a U.S. Forest Service effort tackling trespass grows on public lands, co-founded the research center with Wengert and now co-directs it with her. He\u2019s also her spouse, and a foil to her calm watchfulness \u2014 dismayed by the state of the forest one moment, and bounding off to investigate an interesting mushroom or animal scat the next. <\/p>\n \u201cPlease don\u2019t push the red shiny buttons, or lick the big pink things,\u201d Gabriel joked at the mouth of a well-worn path growers had carved into the woods. (Carbofuran, a dangerous and illegal pesticide often found on grow sites, is bright pink.)<\/p>\n The team, Gabriel explained, wasn\u2019t there to clean up the grow. They didn\u2019t have the money for that. Instead, he said, shouldering his backpack and strapping on a first aid kit, they were there to document the contaminants as part of a U.S. Forest Service-funded investigation into wildlife around cultivation sites.<\/p>\n \u201cThis site will sit on this landscape until someone acquires some level of funding,\u201d Gabriel said. \u201cAnd no one can really push it, until we actually get that data.\u201d <\/p>\n Wengert and Gabriel have spent years collecting data at grow sites like this one. They\u2019ve found carcasses of creatures so poisoned even the flies feeding on them died, and detected dangerous pesticides in nearby creeks more than a year after raids. <\/p>\n In recent work<\/a> they published with scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the team found that illegal grows pulsed pollutants from plastic, painkillers, personal care products, pot and pesticides into the soil that could be detected months or even years later. Some contaminants also showed up in nearby streams. <\/p>\n The pollutants diminished over time \u2014 absorbed into the landscape and washed into waterways. By the time the researchers tested for them, the concentrations had declined to levels lower than those found in agricultural soils. <\/p>\n But, they point out, remote habitats and sensitive headwaters are not where these chemicals are supposed to be. Past a marshy flat cratered with holes and piled with poison-green insecticide bags, Gabriel, Wengert and ecologist Ivan Medel trailed an armed U.S. Forest Service officer to a massive trash heap cordoned off by barbed wire. <\/p>\n Medel wedged himself through the strands and handed empty fertilizer bags dripping blue liquid out to Gabriel. <\/p>\n Force-feeding waterways the excess nutrients in fertilizer can upend entire ecosystems and spur algae blooms<\/a>. The site is in the greater South Fork Trinity River watershed \u2014 vital, undammed habitat<\/a> for protected salmon and other fish species. <\/p>\n \u201cThat was pretty nasty,\u201d Gabriel said, as one bag spilled liquid over his gloved hands. He counted up the haul. \u201cTwelve bags right there.\u201d <\/p>\n By day\u2019s end, the team discovered enough empty bags and bottles to have held 2,150 pounds of fertilizer and more than 29 gallons of liquid concentrate. All of that, the growers had poured into the land. <\/p>\n A federal void<\/p>\n In 2018, a federal audit lambasted<\/a> the U.S. Forest Service for failing to clean up \u2014 or even document \u2014 trespass grows in national forests. <\/p>\n The agency was finding and eradicating cannabis grows in national forests effectively. But its failure to consistently clean them up, the audit said, put \u201cthe public, wildlife, and environment at risk of contamination\u201d and could allow growers to return more easily. <\/p>\n Little has changed. From 2020 through 2024, when Gabriel worked for the agency, a spokesperson said the Forest Service \u201cprioritized reclaiming sites over investigating active grows.\u201d<\/p>\n But the agency said it still has received too little funding and has too few personnel trained to work with often hazardous materials. And the backlog persists. How big it is, the Forest Service wouldn\u2019t say. After declining an interview request and taking two months to reply to emailed inquiries, a spokesperson said CalMatters must submit a public records request. <\/p>\n The Forest Service now is shifting the responsibility for cleanups to individual forests. That, too, contributes to the backlog, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he has tried repeatedly to direct more funding to cleaning up trespass grows on federal lands, but with little success in Congress.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have tried just about everything,\u201d Huffman said. \u201cIt\u2019s clearly not enough.\u201d <\/p>\n Now, under the Trump administration, the Forest Service is even more understaffed. A spokesperson said while law enforcement staffing \u201chas remained steady,\u201d roughly 5,000 non-fire employees \u201chave either offboarded or are in the process of doing so\u201d through \u201cmultiple voluntary separation programs.\u201d <\/p>\n Huffman put it more starkly. \u201cThey\u2019ve been gutted,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Forest Service right now has a sign on the door that says, \u2018We\u2019re out of the office. We\u2019re not sure when we\u2019ll ever be back.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Cleaning it up<\/p>\n The Shasta-Trinity grow stretched for more than 6 acres through national forest land. Trash and the smell of pot were everywhere.<\/p>\n Law enforcement officers had removed the mouth of the irrigation tube diverting water from a nearby creek, but all the piping remained. It slithered over downed trees, past the craters of another abandoned grow to a waterfall where leaves and black tubing snarled in the rocks. <\/p>\n Gabriel clambered up the waterfall, where he discovered a sock and a plastic bottle with the top sliced off \u2014 a makeshift filter the growers used to keep the line clear of debris. He hung the bottle on a tree branch, like a ghoulish Christmas ornament. <\/p>\n Few organizations are qualified to do science-informed cleanups, and none work as widely as Wengert and Gabriel\u2019s. <\/p>\n