[420 Girl]

Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies say they have seized more than 340,000 marijuana plants with an estimated street value of $1.4 billion and arrested 36 suspects in a sweeping crackdown on marijuana cultivation on public land in eastern Tulare County over the last week.

The joint operation involving 14 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, which started July 27 and will continue through Aug. 9, brought President Bush's drug czar, John Walters, to a press conference at the National Guard Armory in Visalia yesterday, where officials announced the program.

Called Operation LOCCUST, for Locating Organized Cannabis Cultivators Using Saturation Tactics, the foot- and air-based raids focused on 83 locations where marijuana was being grown on federal and state land in eastern Tulare County.

Some of the land was in the Sequoia National Forest and in Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks.

"I want to congratulate those here who've made these arrests possible," Walters, director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said to an audience of about 70 law enforcement, state and local officials.

Walters spent Tuesday morning in a Blackhawk helicopter touring several marijuana growing locations. The tour stopped by Osa Creek in the Sequoia National Forest, where officials said they destroyed up to 12,000 plants Monday evening.

Among those accompanying Walters was Tulare County Supervisor Allen Ishida, who has pushed for federal and state aid for drug policing on public lands.

Up to 80 percent of the marijuana grown in the United States is grown on public lands, much of it controlled by Mexican cartels, Walters said. The raids, he said, were meant as a message to those drug traffickers:

"Get out," he said. "You're not going to turn our communities and our national treasures into poison."

Multi-agency operation

The joint operation involves a range of federal, state and local agencies, including the U.S. Attorney's Office, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, the California Highway Patrol and the Tulare County Sheriff's Department.

The agencies began planning last November and started surveillance flights by the California Air National Guard in January, Tulare County Sheriff Bill Wittman said.

The operation is a pilot program that began last year in Shasta County, one of the dozen of inland California counties where large-scale marijuana cultivation on public lands is a growing problem, said U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott.

Officials said they were especially concerned about how the presence of marijuana growing areas affects public and law enforcement safety, as well as their environmental effect because poaching, clear-cutting and toxic chemicals are often involved.

Last year, Tulare County spent $350,000 and was forced to assign much of its gang task force to public lands drug policing during the summer, county officials said.

The joint operation, however, helped the county quickly equal its 2007 record-setting marijuana busts and dismantle some of the infrastructure — irrigation hoses, stream diversions, and tents and cabins — that growers erect, officials said.

"We've never had the resources available to do that," Wittman said, adding that the total cost of the program will be shared among the participating agencies and has yet to be determined.

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