The discovery of 22,740 marijuana plants growing in and around Point Reyes National Seashore last week wasn't only the biggest pot seizure ever made in Marin County. It was an environmental mess that will take several months and tens of thousands of dollars to clean up.

The crops seized on the steep hillsides overlooking Highway 1 were planted by sophisticated growers who cleared vegetation, terraced land, drew water from streams through miles of irrigation hoses and doused acres of land with hundreds of pounds of fertilizer and pesticides.

Such operations are turning up in greater numbers within state and national parks throughout California. Federal officials estimate the state produces half of all the marijuana seized on public lands nationwide.

Link.

Bill Quick adds more:

The original pot 'farmers' in the area all came from the Peace, Love, and Granola hippy crowd up from San Francisco. Their ventures were eventually systematically hijacked by the heavily-armed drugissimos, and for a while there, a lot of mysteriously shot up corpses in tie-dye were scattered amongst the redwoods.

To bad the original growers weren't Black Panthers. That would have made for a much more interesting contest, given that the Panthers always were staunch supporters of the Second Amendment.