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SMOKEOUT War in the Woods: Combating the Marijuana Cartels on America's Public Lands: John Nores Jr. and James A. Swan. 200 p. $16.95 (paperback). Guilford, CT: Lyons Press. 2010. ISBN: 978-1-59921-930-1.
The Mendocino National Forest sprawls across the coastal mountains of northwestern California, and contains some spectacular terrain - Soutii Yolla Bolly Mountain, the Snow Mountain Wilderness, and Lake Pillsbury, among other gems. It also has a lot of remote nooks and crannies, steep-sided canyons, and sheltered leas, as well as fertile soils that nourish oak, fir, and pine, cedar, cypress, and yew.
Also Cannabis sativa. So much of it is grown there that its growers' ofF-the-books profit dwarfs the financial returns that legitimate lumbering or recreational fees can ever generate. Its significant and disproportionate impact even has led locals to rename the Mendocino as the Marijuana National Forest.
A lot of other national, state, and county forests in California could claim that nickname. And every summer, tactical teams consisting of rangers, game wardens, and sheriffs launch well-coordinated eradication campaigns to uproot what the Mexican drug cartel, and a host of other bad guys, have planted along some of the country's most inaccessible terrain. In August 2010, for instance, law enforcement officials on the Lassen National Forest took down 27...