Pot Farming and Snowy Owls

A number of years ago, environmental groups went to war with the lumber industry over the plight of the snowy owl.  It nests in redwoods, and people wanted its habitat protected.  People climbed and camped in trees.  Some chained themselves to redwoods.  Eventually, they won and lumber mills were shut down in northern California.  Some towns went into rapid decline with high unemployment.  Some are still struggling to survive.

But I have new found hope because pot farms (illegal and otherwise) are doing greater damage to the environment than the lumber industry ever did.  Here is a real war for the environmentalists to fight.   Pot farmers are mixing carbofuran with tuna and sardines to kill off bears.  Pollutants are seeping into the watershed: fertilizers, soil amendments, miticides, rodenticides, fungicides, plant hormones, diesel fuel and human waste.  Salmon and trout are dying off, not to mention putting snowy owls and dozens of other birds and animals in jeopardy.  This isn’t about the snowy owl making a nest a little further afield than the local lumbering site.   This is about cartels planting thousands of marijuana plants in the hills and valleys of Northern California, an area famed for its natural beauty. 

I’m counting on all those environmentalists to come to our rescue.  I’m eagerly awaiting the protest marches, the army going up into the woods to root out those pot farmers who are killing our flora and fauna to grow marijuana and rake in untaxed money from addicts.  I’m looking for articles on environmentalists pulling up stink weed and throwing themselves in front of tractors tearing up the forests to make grow fields.  I fully expect those who were so rabidly opposed to the lumbering industry to be equally outraged by the far more virulent damage caused to the environment by pot farming. 

I can’t wait for them to win this war, too, and shut the illegal pot farming business down.