The Environmental Catastrophe in Your Joint

On a cold morning this fall, I was clinging to a paracord line, descending through heavy brush on what felt like a near-vertical hill in Shasta-Trinity National Forest, in front of me a team of influential ecologists, behind me a team of affable, heavily armed law-enforcement agents. If you bought weed on the black market recently, there’s a good chance it came from a grow like this one. Trespass grows are not just an eyesore and a misuse of public lands.