Posts Tagged: marijuana

Poisons on public lands put wildlife at risk

Rat poison used on illegal marijuana farms may be sickening and killing the fisher, a rare forest carnivore that makes its home in some of the most remote areas of California, according to a team of researchers led by University of California, Davis, veterinary scientists.

Researchers discovered commercial rodenticide in dead fishers in Humboldt County near Redwood National Park and in the southern Sierra Nevada in and around Yosemite National Park. The study, published July 13 in the journal PLoS ONE, says illegal marijuana farms are a likely source. Some marijuana growers apply the poisons to deter a wide range of animals from encroaching on their crops.

Fishers in California, Oregon and Washington have been declared a candidate species for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act. Fishers, a member of the weasel family, likely become exposed to the rat poison when eating animals that have ingested it. The fishers also may consume rodenticides directly, drawn by the bacon, cheese and peanut butter “flavorizers” that manufacturers add to the poisons.

Other species, including martens, spotted owls, and Sierra Nevada red foxes, may be at risk from the poison, as well.

“Our findings were very surprising since non-target poisoning from these chemicals is typically seen in wildlife in urban or agricultural settings,” said lead author Mourad Gabriel, a UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory researcher and presid

ent of the Integral Ecology Research Center. “In California, fishers inhabit mature forests within the national forest, national parks, private industrial and tribal community lands – nowhere near urban or agricultural areas.”

“I am really shocked by the number of fishers that have been exposed to significant levels of . . . anticoagulant rodenticides,” said pathologist Leslie Woods of the UC Davis California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System.

Exposure to the poison was high throughout the fisher populations studied, complicating efforts to pinpoint direct sources. The fishers, many of which had been radio-tracked throughout their lives, did not wander into urban or agricultural environments. However, their habitat did overlap with illegal marijuana farms.

Gabriel said fishers may be an “umbrella” species for other forest carnivores. In ecology, an umbrella species is one that, if protected, results in protection of ot

her species, as well.

“If fishers are at risk, these other species are most likely at risk because they share the same prey and the same habitat,” said Gabriel. “Our next steps are to examine whether toxicants used at illegal marijuana grow sites on public lands are also indirectly impacting fisher populations and other forest carnivores through prey depletion.”

In addition to UC Davis, the study involved researchers from the nonprofit Integral Ecology Research Center, UC Berkeley, United States Forest Service, Wildlife Conservation Society, Hoopa Tribal Forestry, and California Department of Fish and Game.

(This article was condensed from a UC Davis news release. Read the full press release and watch a flash video of fishers in the wild.)

Urban chickens are fun and a current fad

Cities throughout the United States and Canada are reforming land-use and health policies to allow and encourage urban agriculture - including raising chickens, wrote Josie Garthwaite in the New York Times.

Among her sources for the story was the director of UC Cooperative Extension's Statewide Master Gardener Program Pamela Geisel, who keeps 10 hens at her own rural home west of Chico.

She said enthusiasm for homegrown hens in urban areas may be close to peaking.

“It’s sort of a fad,” she said. Still, “it’s easy to buy chicks, and they’re cheap."

Most of the potential problems tend to arise from having too many chickens in too little space, she said, so regulations for the size and housing of backyard flocks can “help chicken keepers be better chicken keepers.”

She cautioned that keeping chickens involves a significant effort.

“The poop just doesn’t go away — it’s a constant daily cleanup,” she said. “They get sick, they get parasites. For many people it’s just not worth the effort.”

California's growing marijuana business impacting agriculture
Harry Cline, Western Farm Press

California has the dubious distinction of being America’s biggest marijuana supplier. Approximately 75 percent of the marijuana sold in the U.S. is grown in California — not Mexico.

Michelle Le Strange, UCCE farm advisor in Tulare County, said she has been warned by county officials and law enforcement officers that she should be alert in driving a county vehicle in rural areas because marijuana plantation tenders might think she is a law enforcement officer, and she could be in danger.

Any government officials driving vehicles with government plates should be concerned because these marijuana plantations are operated by Mexican drug cartels, the same lawless gangs who are responsible for thousands of murders each year in Mexico. These cartels actually scour the U.S. Forest Service lands in search of ideal growing sites, often adjacent to running streams. The cartels stock these plantations with people, drip irrigation tubing and chemicals to farm the illegal weed.

Pollute, poach, dewater: Legacies of illicit cannabis grows

While the legality of California’s medical marijuana dispensaries is being debated in courtrooms, a UC Cooperative Extension forestry and wildlands ecology advisor says there are a number of issues related to the unregulated land-use practices of illicit cannabis growing that have not been addressed.

“As a forest ecologist, I spend a lot of time outdoors, and I talk to thousands of people every year about forest-related subject matter,” says Greg Giusti. “And you can’t talk to anybody today on the North Coast without the topic of cannabis growing and cannabis impacts on land coming up.”

In Lake and Mendocino counties, Giusti performs research and shares information with public agencies and private landowners in relation to forest management and freshwater ecology on behalf of UC Cooperative Extension. Marijuana farming is not a topic that Giusti ever intended to address.

Effects on natural resources
Most of the data available about illicit cannabis grows is based on drug enforcement actions, specifically how many sites were busted and how many plants or pounds of plant material were seized. Giusti has gathered photographs and anecdotal evidence of the effects on natural resources of commercial-scale marijuana grows operated illicitly on public and private lands.

Some of the effects he has documented:

• illegal water controls (including dams, stream diversion and water storage)
• water pollution from petroleum, pesticide and fertilizer products
• pesticides applied without permits
• pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals left behind
• indiscriminate fish and wildlife killing (including poisoning, trapping and poaching for food)
• human trash and waste left after camping

“It’s not this green industry that people talk about,” Giusti says. “They’re diverting water, they’re polluting streams, and there’s a portion who are poaching. We’re also seeing all of the negative effects of unregulated road building, unregulated construction and unregulated human inhabitation for months and months out in the woods.”

Giusti explained that some cannabis growers divert water from streams to store in large water bladders, prematurely lowering stream levels during critical times in the year.

“It's illegal to do, but at the same time you can drive up and down Highway 101 and easily buy these huge bladders,” he said.

He notes that local businesses are selling compost by the ton, rodenticide by the pallet, thousands of pairs of clippers and turkey bags in lots of 100.

“Mainstream businesses are supporting this underground industry,” Giusti said. “You don’t have to be growing cannabis to be making money off of it.”

Raising awareness
In 2010, Giusti organized two community workshops in Lake County to address the impacts of illicit cannabis land-use on forest resources, for a combined attendance of nearly 400 community members. Giusti has shared his results with the board of supervisors for Lake and Mendocino counties, local news media, local foresters and the staff of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

“My intention was to initiate a communitywide discussion to ask, ‘Is this what you want to happen to your forests?’” Giusti said. “Up until now it's been talked about in hushed tones, and I wanted to initiate a dialogue out loud. Everybody has been whispering about it.”

The presentation he developed for those meetings continues to generate discussion. Most recently, he has presented to the North Coast Water Quality Control Board staff and other agencies. He has shared photos collected for his presentation with Congressman Mike Thompson’s office as well.

“With the water quality control board, I had the opportunity to engage people whose job it is to protect the beneficial uses of water — and hopefully stimulate an internal dialogue so that they can continue the discussion after I leave their office,” he said. “There are other resource agencies that need to be involved, and county planning departments too. This is an unregulated land-use practice.”

This month, the Lake County Record-Bee ran an article by reporter Linda Williams with the headline “Thirsty marijuana grows suck Eel River dry,” which included some information presented at Giusti’s meetings.

“My efforts seem to be improving people's awareness,” he says. “The very thing I wanted to accomplish — creating broader dialogues — is happening.”

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