By Kevin Paulson
In the second part of our interview with Lt. John Nores he gives us an in depth look at what exactly he was up against as a California Fish and Wildlife Officer. John and his team were not only fighting against illegal marijuana farms on public land. He was fighting against illegally banned poisons that these illegal growers used on their plants. These poisons would have a dramatic effect on those who came into contact with it. There was a ripple effect with the surrounding environment. These chemicals were harmful to the people, pets, wildlife and plants that these poisons came into contact with it.
According to John, a large percentage of these illegal marijuana farms that they had found were located on state and federal lands. Eventually, they would move part of operations to private lands such as hunting clubs and ranches.
Kevin: I'm sure that the people who are growing marijuana legally would rather have their customers come to them, first and foremost. And they definitely want to produce a clean product. Whereas this illegal marijuana, if 70% of it is covered in pesticides and nerve agents and things like that, that's going affect our kids, our wildlife, our waterways, this is going affect steelhead, that is going affect trout, it's going affect the bass fishing, it's going to affect all of those things, it's going affect the wildlife.
I have heard a story that the chemicals that they're spraying on these, the wildlife is coming in and eating the crop or eating the vegetation that is around one of these grows, it's harming the wildlife that are there. It's also hurting the dogs that you guys are using or could possibly be hurting the dogs that you're using. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
John: Absolutely, up until a couple years ago, it has really been the last three or four years. We did not realize that the magnitude and the toxicity of these poisons. These EPA ban carbofuran based poisons, just being left in the soil to be absorbed by a dog's paw. If we touch this stuff even when it's dissipated on the ground or in a waterway or on a marijuana plant. If we do not have nitrile gloves where it absolutely can't penetrate, we can ingest this stuff through our pores. We have had officers from other states on the federal level almost fatally exposed during exposure in a marijuana illegal trespass grow situation with these poisons on the product. We have lost a couple of very healthy k-9s at a very early age at the start of their careers when they were healthy, with a clean bill of health and doing great work from puppyhood through training. Can we say for sure it was those banned poisons? We can not. We do not have the scientific data. We do not have the science to back that up. But knowing how it affects wild animals, both our non-game and game species and knowing how it affects us. There is certainly a correlation there that that could be what's happening.
I know that on our team on the state level and with other federal officers with their dogs and other k-9s at the local level, throughout all the states, we're starting to take notice to that and starting to look at preventative... basically PPE, protective equipment and measures for our k-9s as well as for our officers.
Kevin: What percentage of the time that your team worked on this, what percentage of their time is focused on cleaning up the reclamation of these particular lands?
John: We talked a little bit before the interview to the phase of how critical the reclamation phase is but how dirty and arduous it is. Usually when we get to do in reclamation, we have been twelve hours into a mission. We are running out of helicopter blade time. We have spent a long night or half a day trying to stalk and apprehend these guys safely and get them into custody. And if the plants a big grow site say 5000+ plants and some of these are 10, 15, 20 plus thousand plants we are going be there for multiple days just eradicating that poison product. We do not always get to do the reclamation the day of the mission, because we just run out of resources in time and we don't like that. We have to leave that stuff out there. But what we do is we call it kind of putting a band-aid on a cancer. We triage it. We will restore the waterways to keep the pollutants from going into the water. We will stage the pesticides in the trash in an area where they are not doing environmental damage, but they haven't yet been removed. Then we will come back in. Sometimes as many as four, five, six months later when we have more helicopter funding or blade time and more time on the books of people to do the job.
We are spending easily 40-plus percent of our time throughout the year, a conservative estimate, maybe a little more. 40-plus percent of our time doing reclamation missions for that environmental cleanup after we've already done the arrest and eradication phase. A statistic we were able to compile right before I retired is, as a whole the marijuana enforcement team for my unit back of California Department of Fish and Wildlife reclamates to almost a full environmental restoration almost pristineness if you will, 44% of all the grows we ever raid or mission we run. And that's less than 50% and it sounds like a bad number, but compared to all the other agencies have done other resources to do it, that's about 30+ percent higher than anybody else. And it's not a ding on any other agency. They're tapped even less than we are or more than we are because they have to do all their other law-enforcement collateral jobs in addition to trespass grow problem.
The one benefit have in the marijuana enforcement team formalized is that we are a dedicated unit so we do not have to do traditional control functions. We report straight to headquarters as a kind of a SOCOM type unit in the military where you don't have too many hands in the cookie jar of red tape and restrictions which allows us to work very efficiently, very quickly and respond almost immediately. So when we want to run a reclamation mission we can do it within a day or two and find the resources and knock it out.
Our goal ultimately is that 100% of reclamation on every grow we ever come across we are far from that obviously. We are a 12-man team and two dogs. You do the math on doing 100 to 200 missions a year on conservative low side on just cartel marijuana raids, dealing with hundreds of cartel suspects we capture in custody, taken out at hundreds of weapons in that process and all those poisons, it's a lot to ask a team in that size and they do a heck of a lot more than they're equipped to do.
Kevin: What kind of success do you feel like your units having across the state of California?
John: I think the success rate has been good. I definitely know, I started to kind of develop a forte in this environment type of wildlife law enforcement on the cartel trespass grow side almost 15 years ago. Every year we got a little bit better, but it was like taking two steps forward and five steps back. I think we are being very optimistic to say we're getting 25% of the cartel trespass grows out there. That is up from probably less than 5% a decade ago. We might be getting more. What I can say from the standpoint of number of armed deportable felons are classified that we arrest that number has quadrupled or even higher since we started the team because we are focused and we are doing it more often. We are doing it better with k-9 tactics. We are doing it better with guys that have learned to stalk quietly and just have innate field craft skills to do this type of job. Because we come from hunting and fishing backgrounds. We used to sneaking around in the woods like most hunters are. It kind of lends itself to being good at what this team requires to do the apprehension phase of it.
We are doing a better job but are we getting it all? by no means. We have a lot more going on in the state and in the rest of the country. We got to realize that it is not just a poisoned cannabis issue in California and some other states that we are dealing with. These same cartel groups are when they are not producing illegal cannabis across the country, they are cooking methamphetamine within borders and distributing all over the country and ruining people's lives. They are producing synthetic heroin fentanyl. They are doing human trafficking for a multitude of reasons. They are running guns back to Mexico to fight the cartel Wars and stealing a lot of guns and see a lot of ammunition. All of which Mexico does not have the infrastructure for.
So we are talking about one element of just a dangerous enterprise that is embedded nationally and something we have to look at past this cannabis.
Kevin: What percentage of these illegal grows are on public lands as far as state versus federal. How much of this is on Forest Service land. How much of this is on BLM land. How much of this is on state land and how much of it is on private land?
John: Interesting enough that is a really good question, because it has kind of changed. All of this stuff was primarily, I would say a majority of it was 60 to 70 percent was on federal land, US Forest land, National Forest ten years ago. That is an average because we do not get it all. We do not have everybody statistics. We do work very closely with US Forest Service and National Parks and Fish and Wildlife on the federal front. And of course on the state front, we have state parks, county open space. What we were seeing predominantly the last three years up until the end of 2018 when I retired is, a 50-50 percentage split almost down the middle of private-public land. So of the public land, it was an even hodgepodge of out of that 50% just start breaking it evenly between state parks, US Forest Service lands, national parks, county open space, city parks. They have a little remote area like in the city of San Jose and the Silicon Valley where I'm from. You will actually see it there. And that shares 50% of where these trespass grows are.
But as we started to put more pressure on the public land we started to see private ranches, deer hunting clubs, fisheries, steelhead trout fisheries that Trout Unlimited would highlight enhance and you know have a very regulated fishing experience and/or a hunting experience on a cattle ranch with all this pristine black tail or mule deer country. And all of a sudden they're embedded there as much as they are anywhere, because they have gotten pressure on the public lands. So this is not just international forest. This is in our backyard on our private lands as well, almost a 50-50 split.
Kevin: That's just unbelievable to me how big this issue is. One last question. We are here at the NRA show and it is really about guns and weapons and everything that we get to see. Tell me really quickly what are some of the weapons you are using in this fight and in this hidden war?
John: Well certainly, equipment is everything to staying alive and in this type of job, as far as the special ops team is concerned, we are all heavily into the weaponry that we use and we have to rely on it. We have to know what is going to work. So we use a lot of different platforms in the pistol front, we are Glock agency, Glock 40, Cal Model 22s, they have served us fantastic, because they are polymer, they are bulletproof as far as dust and corrosion and dirt and debris and water and they are lightweight. And one thing my team needs is a kit that as light as possible because we hike 100 degree heat. We hike great distances and we hike in heavy elevation gains and very steep country to find these grows and deal with them.
We went from an M14 rifle platform to Frank DeSomma's Patriot Ordnance Factory, P-308 back in 2012. I am actually at the POF booth today where we are doing our book signings and press, because Frank has graciously put us up here because he was one of the biggest supporters of our mission not only for the entire agency, but he knows very well that this platform was going to be used extensively on the Special Operations front for the met team.
So we run the POF rifle. We run a piston-driven 762. So it is not maintenance free, but very easy of maintenance. It works really well and really brushy-brushy conditions. It is very easy to maintain and easy to clean.
The original P308 was a heavy platform. We still ran it, because we wanted the bigger caliber for the dense country we work in and we just recently went to this ultra-light platform “The Revolution” which gives you a 556 weight and sized weapon in the 762 caliber. Those guns for the met team especially have been a godsend. That one was a hard one to give up when I retired because I finally had a lightweight featherweight 762, I could fling around that was not like an anchor chain and I had to turn it in. But the guys back on team still doing it or running that gun a really good effect right now.
That is what we are using on the product front but it just breaks down to having good systems and besides the weaponry everything from armor plates and trauma medicine gear, what type of vehicles, what type of camouflage we use, just like a military special ops team, it is kind of a gadget game and finding the right combination and there is really good stuff to make our job effective and Frank's rifle is one of them.
Kevin: Real quick, last question, where can people buy your book?
John: You can get that book at Barnes & Noble online or Barnes stores and in any other major book store. You can buy it on Amazon. The kindle version of it just dropped this week along with the hard copies getting here in time for the NRA. So you can get the hardback on Amazon. The kindle e-book on Amazon. You can also get these through me if you want to personalize copy and you are not coming to one of my functions or talks or book signings. Just email me at Trailblazer413@yahoo.com . And I will set up arrangements where I get you a signed copy shipped out and you can also monitor me on the website as far as book events go and education and outreach at www.JohnNores.com We will be sure we get anyone that wants a copy and wants to take the time to read the book an expose the issue a copy in hand quickly.
Kevin: Ladies and gentlemen pay attention to this issue. Buy this book. Read this book and alert your local Game and Fish Department throughout the entire country, because to be honest, they need to know that the funding has to go towards making a difference especially in California but across the entire country as well. Let your game warden to know that they need to be prepared for this coming crisis.