Redding, CaliforniaDeep inside Northern California’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest, wildlife ecologist Mourad Gabriel is dressed in camouflage, waiting for the raid.
He’s accompanied by more than a dozen armed officers with the U.S. Forest Service, local sheriff’s office, and other agencies on a hot August afternoon. Their plan: to seize and dismantle a nearby illegal marijuana grow site, hundreds of which are discovered on California’s national forests each year.
At this site—just off Route 36, east of Redding, and down a rocky forest valley—more than 4,000 marijuana plants grow beneath sugar pine and Douglas fir. There is also a campsite with several tents, two cisterns, and hundreds of feet of irrigation pipe.
During the raid, officers arrest two alleged growers. Once the site is
