SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — On the brink of the summer tourist season, officials here are confronting an ominous reality -- multimillion-dollar stands of marijuana tended by armed growers who have menaced visitors, killed wildlife, polluted streams and trashed pristine countryside.
Marijuana cultivation in the park has increased steadily over the last 10 years. Since 2001, however, the number of plants seized in the state's oldest national park has jumped eightfold.
The pot fields are financed by the Mexican drug cartels that dominate the methamphetamine trade in the adjacent Central Valley, drug enforcement officials say. The officials say there is evidence that the cartels, in turn, have financial ties to Middle Eastern smugglers linked to Hezbollah and other groups accused of terrorism.
"This is the most serious and largest assault on this park since we took control of the land in the 19th century," said Bill Tweed, Sequoia's chief naturalist. The park was established in 1890, one week before Yosemite was designated a national park.
"To have people out there showing up with AK-47s to greet visitors -- that's not how it's supposed to be in a national park. The premise of the park as a special place is now in trouble. So is the idea that you can put a 'fence of law' around a national park." He added that the park is "not immune from the ills of society."
The dimensions of the problem began to unfold last fall when park officials destroyed a marijuana crop valued at nearly $150 million scattered over remote mountainsides.
"Our belief is that the Mexican drug organizations have gone heavily into marijuana operations," said Ron Gravitt, special agent in charge at the Sacramento headquarters of the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.
"The overhead is much lower than running a methamphetamine lab. They are taking the money from meth and putting it into expanding marijuana growing."
Most of Sequoia's marijuana stands are hidden in the steep Sierra Nevada foothills in the lightly traveled southwestern reaches of the park. However, large plots have been discovered a dozen miles from park headquarters. Sequoia and adjacent Kings Canyon National Park are managed as one park encompassing 1,350 square miles.
Dennis Burnett, Park Service law enforcement administrator in Washington, said crime has been on a "constant march" into national parks. Almost 60% of the marijuana plants eradicated in California last year were found on state or federal land.
