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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 we are talking about trespass cannabis production and its impact on the environment. And we have two fantastic guests from the Integral Ecology Research Center, IERC, based in Blue Lake, California -- Greta Wengert and Ivan Medel. Welcome to the Econews Report.

GRETA WENGERT:

Thanks. Great to be here.

IVAN MEDEL:

Thank you, Tom.

WHEELER:

All right, so IERC, we'll also always just refer to you by your acronym because for some reason the word integral, I find to be such a hard word to say, especially on the radio. So IERC, tell us about IERC and how you got into doing this kind of interesting but very particular research.

WENGERT:

Sure. Well, IERC got its start back in 2004, actually, and we started small. We're a 501c3 nonprofit research organization. We spend local here in Humboldt County. Our start really was focused on some wildlife conservation issues of concern. We, our traditional ecologist projects were the first projects that we really got into looking at forest carnivores and impacts from disease and predation and some anthropogenic sources.

So it wasn't really until about, I don't know, eight or so years into IERC's research that we sort of fell upon this issue of illegal cannabis cultivation and how it affects all the wildlife we were studying, and so we didn't really think of it until we were investigating species such as the fisher, which is one of the flagship species that we have studied for a long time, started showing up dead from poisoning in the middle of the forest, and that opened the whole world of investigation to where are these poisons coming from? Ultimately, we found out they're coming from illegal cannabis sites on our national forests. So that was really what opened the door to this whole world of research that we focused on for the past roughly 12 years, where we're looking at all the different environmental impacts from this activity on our public lands.

WHEELER:

I imagine finding some of those initial fissures and wondering what the heck is going on was an interesting moment in time. Can you take us back and go through the thought process that you had of, is this a disease? Is this something else? It's in the middle of the forest. What could it be but not a disease, I imagine.

WENGERT:

It was sort of surprising. So we had, we were working with a bunch of biologists throughout the state who were tracking fishers. And once the fishers, when fishers that were collared would die, they would send out a specific mortality signal. So you'd go collect that carcass. And then we'd work with a pathologist to determine what was the cause of death. So maybe 30 fishers into the project, we ended up finding one that was clearly had died of poisoning, specifically rodenticide poisoning. And this, it was a total surprise because we hadn't seen it before.

And it was, this animal was actually from the Southern Sierra Nevada, right next to the Yosemite National Park. So at first we didn't know how these poisons would have gotten out there. We talked with the Forest Service. We talked with nearby timberland owners that were still, their properties were many miles away. No one was using rodenticide from all the sources we talked with. Even PG&E power lines, are you guys using rodenticides out there? The answer was no. And so it wasn't until we started talking with some friends who happened to be law enforcement officers, natural resource officers that indicated that they knew of a bunch of illegal grows out there on the landscape in the areas that we were finding these fishers that were, they knew to be using rodenticides. And I think that was our clear answer right then with that conversation.

And ever since then, we've been tracking the level of rodenticides that we find in fishers and other wildlife. And it turns out to be a pretty common issue out there with all the wildlife we've looked at over the years. So it was sort of a epiphany moment, not a good one, obviously, but it really did shed light on this huge problem that we didn't really know about until that one fateful fisher.

WHEELER:

Ivan -- trespass cannabis production. Let's talk about that. Let's define it What's going on here? What are we what are we talking about when we're talking about these trespass gross situations?

MEDEL:

That's a great question, Tom. So when we're talking about trespass cannabis cultivation, we're not talking about cannabis cultivation that's your mom and pop's operation that's small or local or on private property. These sites are deep on our public lens. They're in very, very remote areas. Sometimes they're in wilderness areas. A lot of times they're in areas where you have to hike off trail, a kilometer, a mile. We've done sites recently where it's up to eight miles walking off trail in order to reach some of these sites. So they're deep in the wilderness, deep on our public lands that have been set aside for preservation purposes.

So the problem with these is that in order to create an environment where these guys can actively cultivate cannabis, they need to remove a lot of the vegetation to open up space for light and for these cannabis plants to actually grow. They're diverting millions of gallons of water in order to irrigate these locations. And a large problem is they're actually applying highly toxic pesticides to keep away herbivores and to keep nuisance pests from eating their plants and trying to protect their product. So that along with the fact that they're staying on site for up to six months of the year and bringing in all of these food resources, those food resources attract local wildlife and bring them into the sites where they're then exposed to all of these toxic chemicals.

So we get kind of this cascade effect where these sites are acting as attractants, bringing in wildlife, then contaminating them. The wildlife is then leaving and being consumed by other wildlife. And it's just this entire trophic cascade that ends up having major environmental impacts for not only our wildlife, the food webs, but it can also contaminate our local streams and our surface waters.

WHEELER:

So to be clear, what we're talking about here is not the kind of cannabis that you might find at your dispensary, right? Those are gonna be through the regulated marketplace. Those are registered through the state of California. We have a track and trace program that should ensure that the cannabis that you're consuming is being produced in a way that's safe for you. This is a whole other category of stuff, right? This is black market. Tell us about the kinds of operations. Who are running these? And where is their product ending up to your knowledge?

MEDEL:

So, from a science standpoint, it's kind of irrelevant who is doing the cultivation for us, right? The fact that they are, it doesn't really matter who they are. The environmental impacts is what we are most interested in and identifying those impacts and identifying solutions of how to mitigate them. That being said, you would hope that those products aren't making it onto the legal market. You know, that's probably a larger topic, but there may be loopholes for it to get into that market. I wouldn't want to speak to the end point of where it's actually being distributed. I think that's more of a law enforcement specific question and not something that we particularly follow. But the meat of the question for us is what are they doing to the environment? What kinds of repercussions does it have? How widespread is that issue? And what can we do to stem the problem?

WHEELER:

Well, so part of this though, and it being a black market product, is that the use of pesticides is regulated for cannabis, for human consumption, regular stuff that you would find at a dispensary. Here we have these illegal operations. It can never be legal. These are folks who are set up on federal public lands. And so we have, we have the folks who are doing these might not have the same sort of concerns about using pesticides either for the health of their own product or for the health of the environment. And I understand that a lot of these pesticides that are being applied are not legal for use in the United States in the first place. Can you talk about what you are finding at these trespass grow operations?

MEDEL:

Yeah, that's a great point that there is some pesticides that are legal for use on cannabis products within the regulated market. There is no pesticide that is legal for application within a national forest or on any of our public lands. So basically any over-the-counter substance that they might be using, that's already illegal. But yes, they are using highly toxic substances such as carbofuran and methamphetaminophos. Carbofuran has been banned in the United States, Canada and the European Union because of its high toxicity. Methamphetaminophos is the same. And we find carbofuran at about 64 or 65% of these sites. So it's really, really prevalent. And we find at least one type of pesticide at approximately 97% of these sites. So the use of pesticides at these locations is highly ubiquitous. And that's a large concern not only for wildlife but also surface waters. They're major source points of contamination deep in our remote forest areas.

WHEELER:

Greta, let's talk about how pesticides impact wildlife. So we've talked a little bit already about fissures. Fissures are a small forest carnivore. What is, well, maybe we'd start with bioaccumulation and how this pesticide is getting into fissures and building up in their system to the point that it can produce lethal impacts.

WENGERT:

Right. There, as I mentioned, there's all kinds of pesticides that are being used out there. I think the most notorious at this point is probably the anticoagulant radenocides. And those are what really opened the door to the issue for us anyway, because that specifically was the pesticide that we found in all these fishers. It is, it's basically radenocide, rat bait, that you used to be able to buy pretty freely over the counter. Some of them are heavily regulated. Now you can still purchase them, but you need an applicator's license and they're, they're heavily restricted. So definitely more difficult to get now, but these are poisons that are really targeting rodents. Like Ivan said, that could be either chewing on the plants themselves, the irrigation pipe, or even getting into the food stores of people that are living out there for so long.

So these particular pesticides get in the base of the food chain in the rodents. Those rodents then get eaten by things like fishers or spotted owls or other raptors that use the forest and then bioaccumulate up the food chain. So perhaps a fisher that eats one exposed rodent isn't going to die immediately. But if that fisher is using the growth site repeatedly and consuming exposed rodents, then that accumulation will build up and potentially kill that animal or move on to its offsprings. We know that these pesticides are pretty harmful and they actually can be passed on to the offspring. So fishers are not the only ones at risk here. It's the raptors, the mountain lions, bobcats, all kinds of forest critters that can be exposed. We also worry that the amount of rodenticides that are used at these sites have an impact on the prey population. So perhaps the mortality is so high in a particular area that it decimates the entire prey population that was available for these carnivores.

It really ... the list goes on about the species and the ways that these pesticides can impact the entire food web. But we do know that some of the rodenticides that have been banned or heavily restricted for so many years, over 10 years are still showing up in the necropsies that we do on owls and fishers and martens, which means it's out there in the environment, not necessarily still being used as the rodenticide isn't being distributed, but because it was used five or 10 years ago, got into the food web and remains an issue for years and years and years because of the slow degradation rate of these pesticides. Ivan mentioned carbofuran. It's incredibly toxic. And that is a pesticide among many others that has a much quicker mortality rate. So any animal that comes into contact with carbofuran or methamidophos or some other highly toxic pesticides will immediately die. And so what we see is roughly half of the sites that we go to have dead animals at them.

And so it's sadly a really common thing that animals anywhere from little shrews and rodents all the way up to mountain lions, bighorn sheep even have been found at these sites dead from pesticide exposure.

WHEELER:

You are listening to the Econews Report. We're talking with the Integral Ecology Research Center about their work documenting the impacts of trespass cannabis production. So we have the impacts to ecosystems, right? As you said, that we're impacting the prey base and that can have ecosystemic impacts.

A lot of these species that we're talking about too are species that are of concern. Fishers are listed as threatened in the Southern Sierras. The Northern Spotted Owl is listed as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act. Humboldt Martins are listed as threatened as well. Species that are on the path towards extinction. That's what being listed as threatened means. And they are being killed from this. We also have the impacts to individuals. And I imagine that death by anticoagulant rodenticide is terrible. Can you help us understand, and this might be anthropomorphizing a little bit, but what death might be like from one of these pesticides? Because I can't imagine it is pleasant. Maybe it'd be nice to die from carbofurin because you're dead pretty quick, I bet. And yeah, so I'll let you take it away.

WENGERT:

Sure. Yeah, I think death by poison of any type is pretty horrific. We know that anticoagulant radenocides specifically target the blood clotting mechanisms in mammals. And so essentially, when animals are exposed to an acute level, they are bleeding to death, but it's not outward bleeding, it's internal hemorrhaging. And so that's when we saw that first fissure, this entire body cavity was full of blood. So it does happen over a somewhat long period of time. An animal could be lethargic and sick and suffering for many days before it actually succumbs to mortality. We know there's some sub-lethal effects of these as well. So reproduction might be affected by anticoagulant radenocide exposure, behavior, ability to move, ability to evade predators.

So there's all kinds of ways that that particular pesticide can affect all kinds of wildlife. And yes, it is probably a pretty sad and effective for the poison, but a way to die that is not pleasant for the animals. You mentioned carbofuran. There's other radenocides that are neurotoxic radenocides like ramephalin, which we see more and more of as anticoagulant radenocides have been more regulated. We see others cropping up that kill animals in different ways. These are probably equally as bad and really awful to succumb to. They basically can cause seizuring that goes on for 10 minutes to several hours before the animal finally succumbs to mortality or several days. Animals can be sick and just sort of lethargic and ataxic, which means dizzy. They have no motor control for a long time before they actually succumb. So yeah, they're not pleasant methods of mortality for these species. And unfortunately, that's what we see most likely out there. They're on pretty inhumane ways and methods to kill animals.

WHEELER:

Ivan, so we had legalization in the state of California. Has that made any sort of an impact, or what sort of trends are you seeing on the ground with trespass cannabis production? Do you think that this is a problem that is continuing and will continue into the future?

MEDEL:

That's a great question, Tom. And it's something that we're definitely looking into. I think that there is kind of a cyclical nature with public land cannabis cultivation and the quantities of sites that get found every year. And it all kind of depends too, because these sites are very clandestine. They're designed to be hidden. So it depends on the amount of effort that is going into trying to find these sites to really try to capture a realistic quantity of sites that exists on the landscape each year. So the last few years we have seen a general decline of the quantity of sites that are on public land, but we have not seen a decline in the quantity of pesticides that we're finding or the environmental damage on any of these sites. And I think that there may be, we have seen a lot of these highly toxic pesticides start to crop up in some of the private land boroughs as well. Maybe private land boroughs that are cultivating for the black market, but a lot of these pesticides are making their way onto private land grows as well.

So that's also a concern because that's just more, a lot of times these private grows, they are on the wildland urban interface. They are abutted to national forests or other forested areas, and those are all point sources for these wildlife to be poisoned as well. So that's also a concern. It's not just the, the pesticides aren't just a concern with public land, but private land as well. But that being said, I think that as long as there is a market for this product, it will continue to be an issue because when these, if they're growing on public land, they don't have an electric bill. They don't have a water bill. There's not a trash bill. They're basically making money hand over fist off of the resources that were set aside for you and me and every member of the public citizens of this country.

WHEELER:

So we've talked about how these trespass growers and the application of pesticides can have this long history, this tale to them, that even after they are busted or even after a pesticide is regulated or banned, we're continuing to see it in the environment. It continues to crop up in necropsies. This reminds me of one of the problems of public land cannabis production, which is we will often have law enforcement actions that will bust a trespass grow, but then we still need to remediate these sites. And I know IERC just had a press release out celebrating that y'all completed over 30 trespass grow cleanups, remediation efforts, and that this was a partnership between yourselves, the Forest Service, and a number of nonprofits. Can you talk about the remediation of these sites?

So not only -- let me back up and say, not only is IERC doing research on trespass grows and the impacts to the environment or toxicants in the environment, but you are also out there on the ground helping to figure out ways to better clean up these sites once they are discovered, once law enforcement comes in and busts the operation. So tell us about the cleanup aspect.

MEDEL:

Thank you, Tom. So the cleanup aspect is very important to us because it is the active conservation component that addresses the issue. We end up studying and collecting data a lot on the problems of these sites, and it's really, really rewarding for us to also be working on a solution. So what we do is we go into these sites, which I've mentioned are up to eight miles off-trail sometimes. We walk into the site, we assess everything that's there, and then we develop a logistical plan to be able to actually remove it. A lot of times, because of the distance and the quantity of refuse that we find at these sites, we have to pull it out with a helicopter. We find, on average, about 1,000 pounds of trash and food waste and irrigation pipe at all of these sites. So it's a lot of refuse to pull out. And the recent project that we did, we're actually very, very proud of because not only did we clean these sites up, but we targeted sites that were located specifically on wilderness areas.

So the Ventana Wilderness Area, which another species of concern in the Ventana Wilderness is the California condor. All of the reintroduced condors from pinnacles, they utilize that area a lot. So we were very happy to be able to address this concern in an area that's so important to a species that's just being reintroduced and was on the brink of extinction at one point in time. So we, as a part of that project too, there are thousands of unmitigated sites on California public lands. These sites, dozens, if not hundreds, crop up every single year, and they do get eradicated and it's put in a database. But we still have to go out there and actually address these sites, which is logistically very challenging. It takes a lot of resources. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of personnel who can go into these sites and actually package everything up, remove it, truck it off to a waste facility. We also need to address hazardous materials concerns. We need to do it safely.

We need to have all of our safety practices and protocols be in place so that we can do this in a safe way. So it is very, very challenging. It takes a lot of different people with different types of expertise. But as a component of that project, which we're really proud of too, was we actually trained four teams on how they can also develop the capacity for them to implement reclamation and cleanup activities independently. At this point, we've cleaned up about 350 sites throughout the state. We're very, very proud of that. But this problem is a lot larger than IERC. And we are trying to develop capacity within the region so that we can give other teams and other groups the skills and the protocols and the ability to be able to address this problem so that we can collectively address the problem as a whole statewide.

WHEELER:

So addressing the problem as a whole, it seems that one of the issues here is the lack of funding for law enforcement at the Forest Service. Can you speak to the difficulty that the Forest Service has in addressing this problem, just because of the sheer manpower that they might have?

WENGERT:

Good question. And it's hard to answer, really, because as we know, right now, we're faced with a potential government shutdown. Funding is always an issue. And especially for the Forest Service, where the tide sort of turns from year to year about how much funding will be afforded for fires, which is a huge issue in California for law enforcement, for trespass cannabis cultivation, and every other aspect that the Forest Service has to deal with. And I don't want to limit it to the Forest Service, because we see sites on Bureau of Land Management lands, national park lands, state wildlife areas, tribal lands, and throughout. Unfortunately, the National Forest bear the brunt of this problem. It is about 80% of the sites are on National Forest.

So there is, to date, not a steady funding stream to the Forest Service or any other land management agency for reclamation. And unfortunately, what ends up happening is law enforcement officers, ultimately, because these are associated with previous crime scenes, ultimately end up being the reclamation teams dealing with this. And they are, that obviously takes away from their primary duties. So the fact that there is no dedicated source of funding for reclamation in California, right now, it is really unfortunate because, like Ivan said, there's likely thousands of sites still out there that need restoration, reclamation, remediation. Now, with our grant, which was funded by California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Cannabis Restoration Program, this is a huge, at least, band-aid to the lack of funding issue. Over the past several years, there's been a lot of funding set aside just for reclamation, and that has been a huge asset, especially to our project, but to be able to partner with the Forest Service and tackle this problem.

But I think in order to get rid of the problem completely and clean up every site that's still out there, we're going to need more of a steady funding stream over the next 10 or 15 years from the feds, from the state, and even from private foundations to tackle this as a huge partnership. We know that there's hazardous waste still out there on these sites that needs to be addressed. Posing a public safety issue, we know that the environmental damage won't be reversed until we reclaim these sites. So we remain in the mission, the Forest Service remains in the mission, and all the agencies do, but yeah, without a better, consistent funding stream, this problem will not go away.

WHEELER:

If folks want to learn more about your work and the research that you produce and all the things that is IERC, we've only touched part of the work of IERC in talking about Canvas. You do research on a whole host of other issues. Where can folks find out more information about your organization?

MEDEL:

I think, Tom, if people are interested in receiving more information or helping support any of our programs or projects, all that information can be found on our website, which is IERCEcology.org, IERCEcology.org. All right.

WHEELER:

Ivan and Greta, thank you so much for joining the show from the Integral Ecology Research Center based out of Blue Lake, California. Very cool work. Thank you so much for everything that you do and I look forward to having you on in the future. Thank you. And join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.