Drug cartels are not only setting up huge marijuana farms on national forest lands in California, but they are also polluting the land and water with trash and toxic chemicals.
California law enforcement has learned that Mexican drug traffickers are using a dangerous pesticide banned in the United States to grow marijuana in remote areas of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, and are going after their operations.
Americans plant trees and host community events to promote conservation and sustainability. Those activities are important. But they don’t address one of America’s biggest environmental challenges — rapid population growth.
Federal authorities say they arrested two people suspected of having a large marijuana growing operation in the Routt National Forest northeast of Steamboat Springs.
Communities that spring up in Colorado's many forests and mountain ranges are sanctuaries for people who are sick of traffic and urban congestion, but they also force firefighters to spend a lot of their thinly stretched resources to protect homes cropping up next to dense, flammable vegetation, experts say.
