This summer’s Las Conchas fire in New Mexico scorched tribal lands, threatened one of the nation’s premier nuclear facilities and pushed bears into nearby cities. However, it somehow spared more than 9,000 marijuana plants in a remote area of Bandelier National Monument.
Officials said no arrests have been made in the sophisticated growing operation in the park’s backcountry. However, authorities said on Friday they were looking for at least two suspects. They estimate the plants were 1.83m to 10 3.05m tall and had a street value of about US$10 million.
“It was a lot larger than we anticipated,” park superintendent Jason Lott said. “It [was] much bigger and more sophisticated than we ever expected.”
The marijuana operation had an irrigation system and a possible evacuation route for those overseeing the plants, Lott said. Temporary housing structures, trash and food caches were also found nearby.
The pot was discovered in rugged terrain during an Aug. 23 helicopter flight surveying a flash flood, Lott said. That flooding was caused when monsoonal rains fell on the charred area of the monument, where soil and rocks had been loosened by the fire, the largest in New Mexico history.
A number of local and federal law enforcement agencies raided the area early on Thursday morning. No one was captured, but investigators say at least two men were seen at the grow site earlier in the week.
The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office and the New Mexico National Guard both lent helicopters to the operation and a National Guard Blackhawk helicopter airlifted the marijuana out, the National Park Service said. Most of it was transported to an undisclosed location for proper disposal and some was retained for testing as evidence.
Officials said on Thursday’s bust was the first marijuana growing operation detected in Bandelier National Monument, which features centuries-old dwellings carved into canyon walls by ancestors of the Native American pueblos that surround the area.
The Las Conchas fire burned more than 632km2 over 36 days in the mountains surrounding the town of Los Alamos and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The fire started on June 26 when a tree fell on a power line. The flames raced across parts of the monument, Valles Caldera National Preserve and lands belonging to northern New Mexico pueblos.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS