Fires, Drought Helping Marijuana Raiders : Narcotics: A tipster leads authorities to hundreds of plants this week. They expect to find more plants during the harvest season because they are easy to see in dry, undergrown areas.

After uprooting more than 400 marijuana plants at two Ventura County sites this week, narcotics authorities predict many more seizures this harvest season as prime growing spots recover from wildfires and the drought increases plant visibility.

Earlier this month, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department began weekly helicopter searches above the county’s parched mountain areas. The searches, which will continue through the end of the growing season in November, target Matilija Canyon and the rugged backcountry of Lockwood Valley near Ojai, where water still trickles in from the mountains.

“This time of year it’s pretty easy to spot them, especially with the drought,” said Sgt. Arnie Avilas of the Sheriff’s Department’s narcotics division.

“Most of the hillsides in Ventura County are very, very brown,” Avilas said. Marijuana growers, he said, “tap a water source and the marijuana is just a bright green and it just sticks out like a sore thumb.”

It was a tipster rather than a sharp-eyed narcotics pilot who led deputies Wednesday to the 3800 block of Berylwood Road in Somis, where they seized 383 plants, the largest haul this season.

The tip came in an anonymous letter that arrived at the sheriff’s station Monday, complete with a detailed map that led deputies to a barranca between two lemon orchards.

The growers had run plastic hosing to the orchard’s irrigation system. The hoses fed the plants on a drip system, ensuring a constant water supply without the need for visits that might draw attention.

Investigators said fingerprints on cartons and gardening tools might lead to an arrest, but Avilas said growers usually are extremely difficult to catch.

“There are all types of ways to avoid detection,” Avilas said. “If they don’t have to come tend the garden, the chances of . . . being caught there are slim.”

The second seizure came later Wednesday, when deputies found 60 more plants in Matilija Canyon near Ojai--a sign the area has recovered from fires that ravaged more than 111,000 acres in 1985. The fires damaged the soil and water supplies and made the land unusable for growing marijuana, Avilas said. But as the soil recovers, he expects it to increase in that area.

“I think we’ll see a lot more cultivation up there,” he said. “The Ojai area is good because they have the proper climate. It’s usually nice and warm and that Matilija Canyon area usually has water year-round.”

The county’s first major seizure this year occurred about a month ago, when crews uprooted 240 plants along Pacific Coast Highway near the Los Angeles County line, Avilas said.

All of the marijuana seized by the county is destroyed, he said. The marijuana seized Wednesday was being stored at the sheriff’s east substation until it becomes dry enough to burn.

Avilas did not have figures on how much was seized in recent years. But he said that if marijuana cultivation increases dramatically, the Sheriff’s Department will consider joining forces with the state’s multi-agency marijuana eradication force, the Campaign Against Marijuana Plants.

Started in 1983 by the state Department of Justice, the program assists 41 California counties in eradicating marijuana plots. Most of the state’s marijuana is grown in northern and central regions, but officials have recently heard from southern areas, including San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego counties, said Carolyn McIntyre, an agent who heads the CAMP program.

Santa Barbara County, the southernmost county in the agency, ranked third in the state last year in marijuana seizures, including about 28,000 plants found at New Cuyama, where Ventura, Kern and Santa Barbara counties meet, McIntyre said.

Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Lenvik, who heads the narcotics division in Santa Barbara County, said the CAMP program benefits the county most by providing personnel to uproot the gardens.