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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report, I'm your host this week Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center, and this week we are talking about a problem that EPIC has worked on a little bit in the past but I'm excited to learn more about, and that is trespass cannabis production and its impact on our environment, particularly the use of toxicants like really gross pesticides that are often employed in these trespass canvas grows. So I have two great experts joining me here for this episode. We have Mourad Gabriel, the regional wildlife ecologist at the U. S. Forest Service. Mourad?

MOURAD GABRIEL:

Hi, good afternoon.

WHEELER:

... and Ivan Medel, associate ecologist at the Integral Ecology Research Center based out of Blue Lake, California. Ivan.

IVAN MEDEL:

Good afternoon.

WHEELER:

Alright, I'm so glad to have both of you on today's show, you are both experts on trespass cannabis production and first let's kind of try to clarify what we're talking about here because this isn't necessarily, you know what we might think about when we think about cannabis and Humboldt County. Ivan, do you want to like give a brief explainer about what trespass cannabis is and how it might differ from regulated or other kind of gray or black market cannabis?

MEDEL:

Sure. So the trespass cultivation that we're talking about, this isn't cultivation that happens on private land that somebody's home or in a greenhouse. This is cultivation that happens deep into forested areas happens on National Park land or National Forest Land Bureau of Land Management land. This is cultivation where people are essentially backpacking in large quantities of supplies and they are growing cannabis, unbeknownst to anyone, nobody knows that it's out there, they're hiding their locations and there's a little there's a high quantity of pesticides that they're using in these areas so that they can deter a lot of the local wildlife because this is a really like unregulated kind of area, right? There's a lot of wildlife out there, there's deer, there's a lot of rodents, it's not the structured cultivation settings that you would see in kind of private land area. So the environmental impacts can be really, really heavy because they are clearing a lot of the land in order to open up space and light for a lot of this cannabis plant production. And they're, you know, like we had mentioned, applying a large quantities of really, really highly concentrated pesticides and a lot of these pesticides that they're using -- they're not just regular, over-the-counter pesticides that you can get at Ace Hardware. They use those as well, but some of these pesticides are very, very highly toxic. They're highly concentrated their illegal for use in the United States and Canada, and they're trafficking in these pesticides from other locations and using it, you know, with their cannabis plants for their cultivation.

WHEELER:

So, as you say, you know, this is never legal, this is wholly illegal business, right? You're going onto federal land or large private landowner land and you're you're you're growing weed. And you've also said that they can use chemicals that are banned in the United States, not for sale in the United States. So this might give us kind of a character study of the folks who are are doing this. What do we know? Who are the type of people who will engage in trespass cannabis production back to you, Ivan?

MEDEL:

So, for this one, I want to hand it over to Dr. Gabriel, because he's with the law enforcement side of it as well.

GABRIEL:

So, um, you know, that's a great question in regards to who are these characters that are performing these clandestine activities? So, um, as I have been alluded to that a lot of this cultivation, its clandestine, so it's illegal nature. This is not something where, you know, for were land management agency and our sister agencies like BLM or National Park Service, etcetera. These land management agencies., uh, it's it's outside of the scope of our agency's mission. It's outside of the scope of what Congress has mandated for us in regards to management or conservation or protection of these lands, and it's outside of the scope of what the public has addressed. So, no matter what, and when we talk about cultivation, it's irregardless of the plant itself, it's just the cultivation the act itself. So the plants are being cultivated and we we term, there's been this loose term of cartels being out there. What we've stated is that these are drug trafficking organizations. So these are clandestine activities for these drug trafficking organizations that are utilizing the public lands to cultivate as a there there polly fiscal syndicate in order to supplement additional resources or whether it is is another deleterious clandestine activities outside of public lands as a support mechanism. So it's not the source. A lot of these organizations, it's not like this is their only bread and butter. This is just like any type of organization um, diversification., so this is their diversification and profiteering. Unfortunately, it's on the backs of the public and also to the burden of the agencies that are are are mandated to store these public lands. So, um, we have different groups that activate, these sites and these groups can be throughout the region. So it's not just, you know who cultivates in Six Rivers here in our backyard is a group that's from the Eureka Humboldt County area. Some folks that are cultivating are actually all the way down to the San Diego area, some all the way to the Washington, the state of Washington. And then we have some in the central valley. And so these organizations are hitting unfortunately, our public lands throughout the region in California, but there's it's not centralized and localized and it's not just one group. It's multiple groups that have these kind of areas that they focus on in areas that they control that we as law enforcement investigations are actively disrupting because it's just not in the best interests of anybody except this drug trafficking organization.

WHEELER:

So I know that you've been studying the environmental impacts of this cannabis production, This trespass cannabis production for a number of years. This is -- I'm just guessing -- probably about your 10th published paper on on the subject. I'm sure you can correct me if I'm high or low there, but you are one of the noted experts on this subject. How did you become interested in the first place? What turned you on to this as as a subject matter worth studying worth investigation?

GABRIEL:

You know, that's a great question, Tom. And the reason why I say this is I think there's this notion unfortunately, that a lot of folks think that I dived into this because I've always had a grievance with the plant itself and and and that could not be that is, it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm a conservationist by heart on conservationist. and both my undergraduate graduate and doctoral work. And and specifically my emphasis has always been in wildlife health and that's the health of the wildlife, the health of the habitats that they inhabit. And also this one health approach of the health of not just environment for wildlife, but also for humans and communities And that health is the understanding the threats from infectious agents. So let's just say rabies or COVID or non infectious agents like lead or pesticides. So what kind of brought this into was during my dissertation work was doing necropsies on fishers from 2006, 7 on until we had in 2010. A fisher died or 2009 or 10 with the first fishers that died in the southern Sierras from road genocide. That's the ingestion of anticoagulant besides a type of pesticide and toxic oasis is the lethal, more morbidity or mortality associated with that pesticide. So we have that individual die and then that kind of just open up the gate where we look at, hey, what is beyond this? What is where's the source points? And so digging in a deeper what we thought was just gonna be abandoned with a minor scratch that we can probably put some neosporin and rectify it just to turn into this festering using, you know, carcinogenic manifestation systemically through the environment. So it wasn't just in one area, it was in multiple areas. And that kind of just leapfrog where one study led to the next study. So, you know, throwing a dart and sticking somewhere and wow, that's what we found. Is it in fishers? Yes, wearing fishers, is it in this a species or is it in that thing? And it just kind of leapfrog from there. So my training and background is basically looking at wildlife and environmental health and regardless of the action, whether it's illegal timber harvesting or illegal pesticide applications, it's the health of the environment and the health of the wildlife. And therefore me working with the with within the Forest Service allows that also connects us to kind of branch out even further to look at this, not just within one forest, but regionally throughout all the forests, in California, looking at that wildlife health.

WHEELER:

Yeah, so I I imagine that that because the root source of this is canvas farms, it both can probably be something that's useful to your research because it's something that can capture people's attention. And I bet it can also be harmful because then it gets politicized, you know, if this was coming from tomato farms or something, if we somehow had a market for really expensive tomatoes that were being grown on public lands, your interest in the subject matter would not have changed because it was tomatoes.

GABRIEL:

And that's and that's the whole thing. Tom is like the red herring arguments or the what about is? You know, that's the unfortunate circumstance and a lot of the the blowback on this research where there is other groups that are performing research on other topics in other deleterious items on the environment. Our focus happens to be on public lands and the illegal use of these pesticides associated with an action. It regardless of that, what the stem of that action, whether it's a cannabis plant or like you said, somebody growing strawberries illegally? It's irregardless of that. That's our our driving force is the protection and conservation of those plants in public lands.

WHEELER:

So let's get to your most recent study, which was published in this year in the journal Water Quality Research journal titled "Passive Monitoring of Soluble Pesticides Linked to Cannabis Cultivation" A multi scale analysis." Let's break down, what are you studying in this study? What is the world of this, the universe of the study?

MEDEL:

Right. So, great question. So essentially, you know, like we've been talking about, we know that there are pesticides applied on these sites. We know that there are a wide variety and type of pesticides that are applied at these sites. And due to a lot of the research by Dr Gabriel and others over the last 10 years, you know, we've gotten gotten a baseline understanding that these pesticides are

GABRIEL:

you know,

MEDEL:

they're negatively impacting wildlife and fishers and owls. And we know that those those different biological communities are also transporting some of these pesticides off site. You know, where they're able to contaminate other areas of the forest. So this study was basically kind of a logical logical step are a logical progression where we wanted to start to look at all? Right, well, we know that the biological communities are being affected by these, you know, does it extend to, you know, a biotic factors. Is it do we find pesticides in our surface, in our surface waters? If we do, What types of pesticides are we finding? You know, are these pesticides being transported off site by, you know, natural watershed processes and not just within the biological community. So that was kind of the main impetus for the study was to kind of give lay down a foundation for whether or not these sites are contaminating surface waters within our national forests and our headwater streams.

WHEELER:

Ivan. How does one test for pesticides in a waterway? Like what what are you doing to collect these samples? What sort of analyses do they go through for you to identify? Oh yes, this is corporate Furin and not like bubblegum.

MEDEL:

It's a great question. so what we use were devices are called polar Organic Chemical Integrative samplers. I'm just gonna shorten that we just call them poses. Uh so what these are is this is a basically a stainless steel cage and this cage has three disks in it that have membranes with a like a like a sorbet inside the membranes. And we just we deploy these in streams in running water and we leave them for an extended period of time, usually about 30 between 30 to 45 days. So that's the passive portion of of the sampling where we're deploying them and we're leaving them so they can basically absorb any chemicals that are that are passing through them in the waterways? And one of the reasons for this is a lot of these areas are in such remote and rural places. And the variability of contaminants and water is so high that just going out and grabbing one sample or you know going out and grabbing two samples it's not really sufficient to be able to. Uh huh. Probably capture the high variability that you're gonna have. So deploying these things for an extended period of time. These posters devices they're able to basically accumulate the pesticides that are in that water so that we get a better understanding of what it what contaminants are in the water because you know if it rains or if it's dry you're gonna see different loads of those contaminants. And were able to capture that full that full suite of flow environment using these. So after that the disks were removed and they were sent to the U. C. Davis California animal Health and Food safety laboratory where they were they utilized a new technique that was developed. Therefore this project extracting extracting this orbit and then basically running it through gas chromatograph mass spectrometer to identify what if any pesticides were present within you know within that disk?

WHEELER:

So you talk about your your sample sites. What were you trying to, were you trying to go downstream of known trespass sites. Are you taking into account perhaps private cannabis that also might be in an area to compare the two impacts? Yeah, go from there. I guess so.

MEDEL:

Great question for this study.

WHEELER:

You know,

MEDEL:

it is a multi scale study. So there's two different components to the study and one of the primary components was we were taking these trespass cannabis cultivation areas. They're known sites. We know that there's pesticides applied to them and we're deploying one of these posts devices both above the site and below the site immediately above and immediately below so that we can attribute any any contaminants that we find in the water too. You know, specifically to that site. If we're getting it upstream, then it might, there might be another source. And we would have to look into that a little bit more. So that's, you know, the first component that's all on National Forest land. We look at 44 different independent trespass cannabis cultivation complexes for that. And within that. you know, we looked at, We deployed these over a span of six years. Not all there's no site that we left it for six years at a time, but we, you know, over six years, we had 44 different sites. And what we found was um For the first rain season after the sites are eradicated or after law enforcement goes in and cuts all the plants out. 11% of the downstream posted samplers tested positive for either carbuforan or which are both very highly toxic pesticides to fish Amphibians and other types of aquatic species that you would find in a lot of these sensitive headwater streams. So that was that was very surprising for us. So

WHEELER:

very significant positive results their carbuforan I think I know enough to know that that is extremely dangerous to humans too. We don't know necessarily the concentrations that might be in a surface water at any time. That wasn't part of the study but if you're in in very small amounts can kill very big things. you probably have that kind of information ready at hand. How much how much do I need to kill like a lion or something like that? Right.

GABRIEL:

Well yeah so even let's just go with the north american animal. So if you go with the black bear £300 black bear you know we're talking about a quarter teaspoon or an eighth of a teaspoon that we find in these concentrations that are out there and we find leaders of this material out there. So what I mean by that is 23 bottles. Some sites have had six bottles so that's six liters of of concentrated material. And as you mentioned it is a band both in its E. P. A banned and E. U. abandoned Canada and it's specifically because of the harmful impacts not just an environment but also if you apply it there's multiple cases where they've applied it the products food products were harvested distributed to consumers and the consumers then got sick or have died from the material because it didn't the material did it like a potato did not metabolize and make that material inert. So that's that kind of environmental and human health risk. And just kind of going back to what what Ivan was mentioning on a study. You know going back to whether or not others cannabis production legal cannabis production on private lands may have influenced a lot of the sites that Ivan chose were where there in the headwaters. So they were a 100% and nothing above that could have been influencing these sites. and so it was it was a nice pinpoint and that the only source of contribution to this surface water contamination must have been the carbuforan or the diocesan in applied at that cultivation site. So it was a really good kind of that's that what I was mentioning the dark was thrown and it's stuck now we have surface water contamination that opens the gates for numerous subsequent studies

WHEELER:

and not that people don't break the rules but for legal cannabis production California these chemicals almost all pesticides are prohibited from use. So another kind of indicator that this is probably not coming from legal cannabis production as well. Not a foolproof indicator but it's not legal folks. So if there's any, well you know I won't I won't rip on where to buy your weed or get your weed from. so this kind of adds to a growing body of research that that shows that this form of Canada's production is is worrisome. So Murad, you talked previously about your wildlife studies, Can you talk a little bit more about those, what other evidence that we have that toxicants from trespass candidates production might pose a threat to wildlife and potentially to human health.

GABRIEL:

So yeah so the so the original study was fishers. So fishers, both fishers in northern California where we have fishers that were exposed to not one but multiple different types of road entity sides present. And also in the southern Sierras where fishers are listed as federally endangered state and federally endangered. We have those fishers that were exposed to numerous different types of road genocides. And then we had another subsequent study to kind of investigate a little bit further. And we show that we also had fishers that were not just being exposed or dying from anticoagulant road genocide but also the additional types of road genocides that are being out there on the market Cali cal several which is a one that basically extracts the calcium from an individual and starts solidifying the vascular system and calcify ng it to pretty much cause kind of like a stroke issue where you have this kind of vascular blockage and then we have a decoupling a neuro toxic and decoupling road genocide bro, methicillin that's also out there that we found fisher. So we didn't have just anticoagulants. We have two different types of genocide. So that's what fishers. We looked at bard owls and spotted owl. So northern spotted owls, they really listen to this species as well. We found them to be exposed. Recently there was a study, I contributed some data to where we looked at some martin's in the Oregon coast and a marten in the Oregon coast was exposed to road genocides. And I believe that specific individual was also hit by a vehicle. so now that's that kind of anger chicken. Did the road genocide lead to some lethargy issues that exacerbated the vehicular strike. We don't know that, but we now have other species. Now it kind of opens that gate. Now we have these these these higher trophic level species. And if we look at us locally, does that mean is it a potential risk to humboldt martens? It's unknown. But we do know that we have growth sites in those areas. In addition to that with the recent reintroduction of California condors. We do know that we have large species such as deer and elk and bears that die from. Besides earth types of pesticides. Now the bear deer or elk are not going to die right at that growth site but they all move away from that growth sites and they may die. And we found already we've documented dead dead bears or other wildlife with dead turkey, vultures present right in the nearby vicinity. So we we have to look at that, you know, we we started piecing together the potential food web contaminations that are occurring from these illegal sites. and now that kind of builds that database where we now and in Ivan's paper build that data based on what does that mean to aquatic species, aquatic wildlife, aquatic which is her pet Afanah. We have otters salman, it's we have a whole bunch of different slew of of fisheries and wildlife that are dependent on these headwaters for us? And what does that mean? So it's it's a great stepping stone for additional research.

WHEELER:

So, Ivan I er see the Integral Ecology Research Center where you work you are often on the ground researching these grow sites. You work hand in glove with the Forest Service to do site remediation. Um In your opinion, are these grow sites, are they the same kind of problem that they are today as they were When Dr Gabriel started this research, which I guess am I saying is this problem becoming less severe, Are are we having the same number of growth sites in your estimation based on your work, given you know, changes in the cannabis economy legalization in our state and in other states, should we be worried for this problem in the future?

MEDEL:

Thanks tom well, there's a lot to unpack there.

WHEELER:

That's very,

MEDEL:

very wide reaching. What I will say is that the sites that we are documenting, we are not seeing any decreases in the scope of the environmental impacts on these sites were not seeing decreases in the amount of pesticides that are being applied or the the, you know, the areas that are being cleared out or the quantity of cannabis that's on one of these these these cultivation sites. So, you know, from that perspective, yes, these sites are still very much a concern. Um, you know, we're still trying to even piece together what is the broad, you know, cumulative watershed landscape scale threat that these sites pose. And you know, this water quality study is kind of a foundational piece to that because as Dr Gabriel is talking about his work with, with fishers and with owls, you know, this is just another another piece in the puzzle for us to fully understand the, you know, the risks that these sites posed to all of our public lands. You know, this is not somebody's backyard, that they're paying for. You know, this is land that you and I and everybody listening, we all, you co own, you know, that's all a piece of ours and basically somebody else is um, you know, they're making money off of degrading our resource.

WHEELER:

That's pretty awful. dr Gabriel. So even if we see a decline in the number of future growth sites, we still have a problem of the historic number of growth sites, some of which have been remediated, where we've gotten the chemicals off the landscapes that have been partially remediated where they've been put in a more kind of stable, less at risk configuration on the landscape Had you know our our past growth is still a problem. How long do these do these toxicants kind of exist in our environment?

GABRIEL:

Yeah. So how long do they exist in our environment? Well, one of the things that, let's say in the water study, you could see where the last last application was close to a year and a half and then we still see that the pesticide carbuforan being detected a year and a half since the last application. So we we have some metrics where we know that it's not just application on day one and then day two, it's all gone. And that's not unfortunately, that's not the case. So that's what you know what we're doing with the Forest Service is one of our our active roles is to go to these historical sites. So all the sites that we we we know that are actively getting hit. Like we we found it on six rivers National Forest this summer, it was disrupted. The plants were eradicated. The hazmat was mitigated and then our next role is to remove the hazardous material. That's our first priority, remove that hazardous material off the site. Now there is still trash and pipes there. But the most immediate threat is the house this material. So but then we have this historical backlog to go back to because as you know, and and your listeners and everybody else knows that a plastic container in an environment doesn't stays, you know, can be stable for years or decades. And what we're trying to do is then get to those locations to mitigate and remove those ASAP so that one the wildlife doesn't encounter it or it spills over to pose an environmental health. So the longevity of this, I think it's that answer still has not been addressed. Like how long after application are we seeing the contamination? You know, those are great answers. We don't have the strong enough empirical data to say at year five it's all gone. I I think we still need to investigate that because unfortunately the other aspect of it too is the data that's out there, E. P a generated or research generated data is what is considered legal use of that pesticide. So if I take one bottle of cover, if you're in that one bottle of cover, if you're is supposed to be reconstituted in 1000 to up to 10,000 gallons. So when somebody puts that one bottle cover peering into a three gallon pump sprayer and spray the soil. Nobody has that data.

WHEELER:

Oh goodness and I imagine that this is a priority for the Forest Service, but one that probably isn't terribly well funded knowing knowing how we fund the Forest Service generally. it is underfunded and this is, you know, not within its kind of normal operations. So any any idea of what we could do to speed up the remediation of these sites to increase the eradication of them to to break them up sooner and to ensure that we we stem trespass growing on our public lands, what what can be done?

GABRIEL:

So one of the things that really encourage folks to do is most of our sites, so we do aerial reconnaissance, We don't do these different types of detections. Were trying to find these sites before the cultivators put the pesticides out there, That's our number one goal. So it's not waiting till the plants we do not as as an agency, it's not about how many plants we cut down. Absolutely not. It's how many sites we hit and disrupt and remove the pesticides before they're applied out there, That's our number one priority. So that's unfortunately you're not gonna find each and every site out there. So what we really depend on is when the public goes and recreates and they find a piece of pipe or piece of trash that's out of the ordinary hunter recreate, er we always asked to report that because then we can act upon that and go back out to those those locations. And the majority of our sites nowadays are reported by the public where a hunter a mushroom gatherer says, hey, I ran into some irrigation line in the middle of nowhere and then we investigate and what helps us to do that is that we go to these sites and were like, geez, there's a couple of bottles of X, Y or Z that we can now mitigate and remove. But if we didn't get this reported, it would have, you know, could have spilled into the environment, the surface waters and at least that level. So that's one of the big helpful that I always ask the public is even if you know what's not supposed to be out there, let us know so that we can act upon it because it's not about and it's can be anonymous that it's not about the plants itself, it's us to get rid of these pesticides in these water diversions AShAP.

WHEELER:

All right, well, thank you so much. Unfortunately, we are at the end of today's show, I will have a link to the study passive monitoring of soluble pesticides linked to cannabis cultivation of multi scale analysis in the Lost Coast outpost where all our episodes are hosted to go to the Lost Coast outpost dot com. And you will find a link there. Thank you so much, Dr. Gabriel, and Ivan for joining today's show.

GABRIEL:

Thanks for the invitation.

WHEELER:

All right, join us again on this time channel next week for more environmental news from the North Coast California.