FruityBud
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The accidental death of a U.S. Forest Service worker last week in the Monument Rock Wilderness underscores the seriousness of an unusually active marijuana-growing season across Oregon this summer.
Steven A. Uptegrove, 52, died Thursday when he was hit by a falling snag while helping the Baker County Narcotics Enforcement Team eradicate 2,156 marijuana plants.
The same day, Baker County authorities took down a marijuana garden with 12,023 plants about three miles away, Baker County Sheriff Mitch Southwick said Friday.
"That makes 27,000 plants in Baker County this year" in four raids, the sheriff said, estimating the street value at maturity of each plant at as much as $3,500.
Statewide, law enforcement officers have shut down roughly 80 marijuana gardens so far this summer, said Harney County Sheriff Dave Glerup of Burns. Mexican drug gangs are suspected to be behind the big operations.
Glerup used helicopters last Tuesday to take down a 5,250-plant marijuana garden at almost 6,000-feet elevation on rugged Steens Mountain south of Burns, he said. His deputies arrested 11 Latino men.
"We believe they are all Mexican cartel grows, and these are hired people," Glerup said.
Also this month:
-- The Grant County Sheriff's Office last Wednesday, took down a 23,000-plant marijuana grow south of Dale, the biggest in county history. Three men and a woman, all Mexican nationals, were arrested, Sheriff Glenn Palmer said.
-- On Aug. 14, police seized 1,630 marijuana plants on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. It was the fourth time since July 2007 that police had raided pot-growing operations on the reservation, all believed linked to Mexican drug gangs.
-- In an Aug. 4 raid, Grant County deputies shut down a 1,530-plant growing operation and arrested five Latino men, Palmer said.
In nearby Malheur County, deputies in early August seized more than 30,000 marijuana plants in three raids in the White Horse Creek drainage north of the Nevada border. Eight "garden tenders" were arrested.
Police say Mexico-based criminal organizations are finding it easier to grow marijuana in the United States than to smuggle it across the border. Glerup has found intricate irrigation systems of PVC pipe, hand-dug water reservoirs at natural springs filled with fertilizer to provide nutrients to the marijuana plants, and camouflaged drying racks.
Palmer said most of the growers he's encountered are in their 20s and entered the country illegally. "They run like the wind, and they don't like police," he said.
Uptegrove was killed at a growing operation dangerously sited about 2 1/2 miles from the nearest road in an area that was swept by wildfires in the late 1980s.
"Snags are all over the place, rotting," said Southwick, the Baker County sheriff, of the site along the West Fork of Bull Run Creek south of Unity. "They are everywhere up there."
Uptegrove was a career Forest Service employee who spent more than 30 years in the agency's wildfire program. He had been assigned to Unity for three years as an engine foreman and station lead, and worked on the Wallowa-Whitman, Malheur, Payette, Willamette and Deschutes national forests, said Judy Wing, a Forest Service spokeswoman in Baker City. He is survived by his wife, Hope.
To the public, the biggest danger of stumbling across a growing operation comes not from snags but growers with guns, sheriffs across the region said.
With archery season beginning Aug. 29, black bear season already under way and people hitting the woods to cut firewood and pick huckleberries and blackberries, the potential for encounters is rising, they said.
Palmer, the Grant County sheriff, seized two semiautomatic rifles and a stolen .40-caliber handgun in a raid on a remote marijuana garden earlier this month, he said.
"These people are armed," Palmer said. "They probably are not going to take lightly anybody coming into their grows."
Anyone accidentally wandering into a marijuana grow should "just leave and notify the authorities," Southwick said. "A GPS reading would be great if they have one with them."
The season still has weeks to go. Lt. John Gautney of the Bend Police Department and a member of the Central Oregon Drug Enforcement Team said his officers have already confiscated more marijuana this year than all of last year, and the raids may just be getting started.
"I would anticipate you are going to see quite a few more between now and the end of September," he said.
hxxp://tinyurl.com/mhwstj
Steven A. Uptegrove, 52, died Thursday when he was hit by a falling snag while helping the Baker County Narcotics Enforcement Team eradicate 2,156 marijuana plants.
The same day, Baker County authorities took down a marijuana garden with 12,023 plants about three miles away, Baker County Sheriff Mitch Southwick said Friday.
"That makes 27,000 plants in Baker County this year" in four raids, the sheriff said, estimating the street value at maturity of each plant at as much as $3,500.
Statewide, law enforcement officers have shut down roughly 80 marijuana gardens so far this summer, said Harney County Sheriff Dave Glerup of Burns. Mexican drug gangs are suspected to be behind the big operations.
Glerup used helicopters last Tuesday to take down a 5,250-plant marijuana garden at almost 6,000-feet elevation on rugged Steens Mountain south of Burns, he said. His deputies arrested 11 Latino men.
"We believe they are all Mexican cartel grows, and these are hired people," Glerup said.
Also this month:
-- The Grant County Sheriff's Office last Wednesday, took down a 23,000-plant marijuana grow south of Dale, the biggest in county history. Three men and a woman, all Mexican nationals, were arrested, Sheriff Glenn Palmer said.
-- On Aug. 14, police seized 1,630 marijuana plants on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. It was the fourth time since July 2007 that police had raided pot-growing operations on the reservation, all believed linked to Mexican drug gangs.
-- In an Aug. 4 raid, Grant County deputies shut down a 1,530-plant growing operation and arrested five Latino men, Palmer said.
In nearby Malheur County, deputies in early August seized more than 30,000 marijuana plants in three raids in the White Horse Creek drainage north of the Nevada border. Eight "garden tenders" were arrested.
Police say Mexico-based criminal organizations are finding it easier to grow marijuana in the United States than to smuggle it across the border. Glerup has found intricate irrigation systems of PVC pipe, hand-dug water reservoirs at natural springs filled with fertilizer to provide nutrients to the marijuana plants, and camouflaged drying racks.
Palmer said most of the growers he's encountered are in their 20s and entered the country illegally. "They run like the wind, and they don't like police," he said.
Uptegrove was killed at a growing operation dangerously sited about 2 1/2 miles from the nearest road in an area that was swept by wildfires in the late 1980s.
"Snags are all over the place, rotting," said Southwick, the Baker County sheriff, of the site along the West Fork of Bull Run Creek south of Unity. "They are everywhere up there."
Uptegrove was a career Forest Service employee who spent more than 30 years in the agency's wildfire program. He had been assigned to Unity for three years as an engine foreman and station lead, and worked on the Wallowa-Whitman, Malheur, Payette, Willamette and Deschutes national forests, said Judy Wing, a Forest Service spokeswoman in Baker City. He is survived by his wife, Hope.
To the public, the biggest danger of stumbling across a growing operation comes not from snags but growers with guns, sheriffs across the region said.
With archery season beginning Aug. 29, black bear season already under way and people hitting the woods to cut firewood and pick huckleberries and blackberries, the potential for encounters is rising, they said.
Palmer, the Grant County sheriff, seized two semiautomatic rifles and a stolen .40-caliber handgun in a raid on a remote marijuana garden earlier this month, he said.
"These people are armed," Palmer said. "They probably are not going to take lightly anybody coming into their grows."
Anyone accidentally wandering into a marijuana grow should "just leave and notify the authorities," Southwick said. "A GPS reading would be great if they have one with them."
The season still has weeks to go. Lt. John Gautney of the Bend Police Department and a member of the Central Oregon Drug Enforcement Team said his officers have already confiscated more marijuana this year than all of last year, and the raids may just be getting started.
"I would anticipate you are going to see quite a few more between now and the end of September," he said.
hxxp://tinyurl.com/mhwstj
