Posted on 07/19/2002 8:00:11 AM PDT by SJackson
While rangers in most national parks are busy monitoring camp sites, managing natural resources, or helping lost hikers find their way, those in southern Arizona's Organ Pipe National Monument are increasingly involved in surveillance missions, high-speed chases, and other law-enforcement activities normally associated with agencies like the DEA. The 330,000-acre park on the U.S.-Mexico border has become such a hotbed of drug-smuggling activity that rangers now use body armor, road spikes, M-16 rifles, and night-vision goggles to interdict illicit activities.
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was once known simply as a tranquil expanse of Sonoran Desert parkland, lying 120 miles west of Tucson. But because it shares 30 miles of backcountry border with Mexico— fenced only with easy-to-cut barbed wire— the park has slowly become one of the most popular routes into the U.S. for illegal aliens and drug traffickers.
In 2001, an estimated 200,000 illegal immigrants entered the U.S. through Organ Pipe Cactus' backcountry. Rangers interdicted 13,000 pounds of marijuana last year as well, which— says chief ranger Dale Thompson— probably represents less than ten percent of the marijuana that actually came through the park and into the States.
Smugglers either backpack the drugs or use SUVs to transport larger amounts of marijuana through the backcountry. Both strategies pose dangers to smugglers, rangers, park visitors, and perhaps most of all, to the park's fragile desert ecosystem.
More often than not, the backpackers are impoverished, would-be illegal aliens who have been hired to travel across the park with up to 60 pounds of marijuana strapped to their backs. They are rarely told the distance they will need to walk, and typically don't carry enough water. In 2001, 23 Mexican nationals perished of dehydration while attempting to make the desert passage on foot.
In many cases, seriously dehydrated hikers destroy cactuses to get to their stored water supplies. "Being the national cactus monument," said park superintendent Bill Wellman, "that's a big deal here." Drug-smuggling backpackers also spray-paint trail marks on rocks and dump garbage as they travel. A story published last spring by the Baltimore Sun reported that trash, empty water jugs, and blackened campfire remains scar the park's backcountry, and that rangers have sometimes been able to track smugglers by their trails of discarded soda cans.
This May, 22 Mexican nationals were arrested for backpacking narcotics through the park. They were carrying over 3,500 pounds of marijuana.
Last month, a ranger in a helicopter overflight spotted several suspicious looking bundles under brush in a remote area of the park. An investigation revealed that the "bundles" were eight backpacks full of marijuana, with a combined weight of 357 pounds. Evidence around the site suggested that the backpackers had fled and abandoned their packs as they heard the helicopter approaching.
Far more destructive than drug-smuggling backpackers, however, are the marijuana-laden SUVs that avoid border patrol checkpoints at legal ports of entry by barreling through the park's backcountry en route to U.S. 85 North. The vehicles do serious damage to the park's natural resources and are often abandoned as smugglers flee from the authorities. In a single month, reports superintendent Wellman, rangers have had to tow as many as 14 SUVs out of the backcountry. "But sometimes they're so far out there that we can't haul them off." said Wellman, "There are three abandoned vehicles that we'll eventually have to carry out with a heavy-lift helicopter."
Drug-smugglers in SUVs also pose a threat to ranger and visitor safety. When drivers realize that they're in danger of being caught, they often take to park roads as they attempt to race back into Mexico, sometimes at speeds of more than 120 mph. So far, three park visitors' vehicles have been struck in such incidents, though no one has been hurt. One customs officer was hit, but not killed, while traveling on foot; and a park ranger had the door ripped off his truck as an SUV careened by on the way back to Mexico.
Thompson reports that the park's drug activities now account for half of all the marijuana seized by the National Park Service, adding that rangers and other law enforcement officials working in the park are barely slowing the drug trafficking. Moreover, the problem is worsening at a staggering rate. "Our seizures go up 30 to 40 percent each year," said Thompson. "It's a very steep climb on a graph."
Although border patrol, customs, police, and immigration officers coordinate efforts with rangers in attempts to control drug smuggling activities, authorities in the area believe that it would take significantly more manpower to successfully deal with the problem. The park employs eight rangers in the summer months, and only six in the winter. They receive a great deal of special operations training in drug-interdiction, but there are simply not enough of them to keep the backcountry under constant surveillance. Wellman says the park needs at least twice the number of rangers it has now. But while the NPS has listed his request as "fairly high priority," as far as he is aware, there is no legislation in the works to provide more rangers for the park.
"At this time, we're only able to provide 12 or 13 hours of patrol coverage each day, but drug activity occurs 24 hours a day," says Thompson. "Realistically we'd have to double or triple the staff to even make a dent in the current problem."
Smuggle dope, smuggle illegals, thats bad, yadda yadda, but chop up a cactus to get a drink in the desert, and you are going to jail.
We have rangers with night vision, body armor, and M16's to see that you get what's coming to you.
LOL. That's also what I thought when I read the headline. I thought it was a story about out-of-control church organists or something.
Cordially,
I agree with you -- it sounds like this article is more concerned about cactus than people.
Well, that settles it for me: I'm buying one for my front yard.
But this article is more proof that MJ should be legalized to remove the profit motive.
The trip leaders that I've spoken to who no longer go there have observed cached baloons of what appeared to be cocaine. As another poster mentions, the article does seem more concerned about the cacti than people. When they mention But because it shares 30 miles of backcountry border with Mexico— fenced only with easy-to-cut barbed wire they fail to mention that we're talking a couple of single strands of wire that wouldn't keep a cow in or out (unless it's been upgraded in the last 8-10 years) and that a Mexican highway paralells the border of the park on the other side.
Oh, the lovely fragile desert. The cursed, rainless place where only the hideous and freakishly mutated survive. WTF is this, an episode of "Captain Planet"?
Only if they were from Poland. Then they'd be pole ...
J.S. Bach -The Great Organ Works.
And he has 16 children as proof.
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