Public lands draw illegal crop

By JARED DuBACH- Staff Writer
Friday, September 18, 2009 5:41 PM PDT







ELKO — Nevada’s wide open spaces draw thousands of outdoor recreationists every year. Unfortunately, this open country has also motivated Mexican drug cartels to bring their operations from the border lands to the homefront.

According to a statement from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 473,771 marijuana plants were discovered nationwide on public lands in 2008. Nevada has about 48 million acres of land administered by the BLM.

In October 2008, three BLM employees doing stream surveys north of Winnemucca were briefly held at gunpoint by three Hispanic men because the employees had stumbled upon their operation.

The employees were eventually ordered to walk back out, but such encounters with growers are not uncommon.

JoLynn Worley, a spokeswoman for the BLM, said the number of gardens being found has remained consistent at four to five per year, but the typical operation has changed from being a private citizen’s clandestine field to one organized by drug cartels south of the border.

“Five years ago we might have had one or two, but they were domestic,â€