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Some 30,000 pot plants seized near California fire
2009-08-18
SANTA BARBARA, California (Reuters) - Some 30,000 marijuana plants were seized from a pot farm run for a Mexican drug cartel in a remote corner of a national forest charred by an 88,000-acre (35.6 hectare) wildfire, California officials said on Tuesday. Authorities have said the blaze was sparked August 8 by a cooking fire lit by marijuana growers camped out in the mountains of Los Padres National Forest, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The suspects, believed to number between two and six, fled the immediate area and remain at large, officials said. Investigators discovered the site days later while seeking the origin of the fire. The marijuana was linked to Mexican drug traffickers in part because of the size and sophistication of the cultivation, Santa Barbara County sheriff's officials said. "There's other evidence there that suggests that as well, and some of this is evidence we just can't talk about," sheriff's spokesman Drew Sugars told Reuters. A crop of 30,000 cannabis plants, some 6 feet tall, were found growing on the side of a mountain, where the pot farmers had diverted a nearby stream to provide irrigation, Sugars said. Most of the plants survived the fire, he said. Also found at the site were stacks of propane tanks, irrigation tubing, empty containers of fertilizer, a charred cooking stove, mounds of trash and a semiautomatic rifle. The fire ultimately charred nearly 89,000 acres, making it by far the largest ever started in the forest by suspected drug traffickers, U.S. Forest Service special agent Russ Arthur told a news conference. Authorities said 2009 has so far been a banner year for pot eradication by the Forest Service and the sheriff's department in Santa Barbara County, where more than 250,000 plants with a street value of about $675 million have been seized. In late July, authorities ripped up 113,000 plants near the area where the latest fire began, Sugars said.
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