Urban Biohazards Invading Forests

In the dark evergreen forests that shroud the flanks of Mt. Rainier, there always has been a whiff of danger. The paw print of a black bear in the mud. A cougar’s gold glint through the brush.

These days, the biggest hazards are man-made.

The recent discovery of a makeshift shack, a camp stove and several containers of chemicals--the makings of a major, backwoods methamphetamine lab--has prompted the closure of the 26,000-acre Tahoma State Forest in western Washington.

The action was taken to allow officers time to track down widely scattered hazardous chemical dump sites. And it marks the first shutdown of an entire forest because of what authorities say is an alarming increase in meth labs moving out of the cities and into the nation’s most remote lands.

“The urban cops have done such a good job of detecting these meth labs, it’s pushed them out of the towns and neighborhoods and into the woods,” said Dennis Heryford, chief investigator for the state Department of Natural Resources.

Last year saw a fourfold increase in the number of meth labs and associated chemical dumps found on the nation’s 191.7 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land, with 488 discoveries in all--a big portion of them in the remote reaches of the Mark Twain National Forest in southern Missouri.

In Washington state, forest meth labs have doubled each year over the last three years, with 20 active labs and 20 dump sites unearthed in the woods outside the Seattle metropolitan area last year.

The Forest Service also is battling a substantial increase in backwoods marijuana farms on federal lands, with 443,595 cannabis plants seized last year--nearly five times the seizures in 1997. Eight of the top 10 national forests for such seizures were in California, where marijuana farms tilled into the trees have ranged to as large as four square miles.

“One of the biggest reasons we’re finding them in rural areas is that there are fewer chances of being detected. There are fewer cops and generally fewer people,” said Kim Thorsen, the Forest Service’s deputy director for law enforcement. “If you’re cooking meth in your backyard, your neighbors are going to smell it, number one. Number two is the asset forfeiture laws. If you’re cooking in your house, we can seize your house or your truck, whereas on public land, you’re really not in that kind of situation.”

Drug enforcement officials consider methamphetamine the fastest-growing illegal drug in the country--and its use has skyrocketed in small towns of the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest, where supply links to imported drugs are more tenuous. Methamphetamine easily can be manufactured with cold medicine, fertilizer and other readily available chemicals.

The highly toxic and volatile nature of those chemicals is a particular problem in the forests, where chemical dumps foul streams, poison wildlife and leave whole swaths of greenery brown from pollution that could take years to recover.

In October, a 46-acre fire on the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois was touched off by a clandestine methamphetamine lab, authorities said.

Law enforcement officials also have found a variety of booby traps in the forests associated with backwoods meth labs and marijuana farms--including shotgun shell booby traps, fishhooks hung at eye level along trails and pits of sharpened stakes designed to impale anyone who falls in them.

“I think we found 18 booby traps last year. Of course, in my opinion, one is too many,” Thorsen said.

And, most meth lab operators are armed. In April, local sheriff’s deputies and a U.S. Forest Service agent were shot at by a meth lab operator while making an arrest in Phelps County, Mo., although no one was injured. Three suspects were arrested.

On Forest Service land along the U.S.-Mexican border, drug smugglers have threatened hikers and campers, Thorsen said. “We’ve overheard them saying things like, ‘Oh, we’ll take out those bird watchers.’ Patrol officers have had their vehicles rammed. So there’s some danger to it,” she added.

In the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest in southwestern Washington three years ago, hikers returned to their car to find it had been searched by two armed men who approached them, Heryford said. “They told them, ‘We know who you are, we know where you live. Get out of here and don’t come back.’

“The propensity for violence is great in these cases. Each time we’ve gone against one of these things, they’ve had a weapon.”

Washington forest officials have uncovered meth labs with varying degrees of sophistication, ranging from pickups parked at campsites to full-size military tents with separate sleeping and cooking quarters and makeshift shacks.

“What we primarily get is these little mom-and-pop rolling labs. We call them Beavis and Butt-head labs because it seems like anybody who tries to do meth by this method is kind of an idiot,” said Dan Fahrni, law enforcement officer for the Gifford-Pinchot. “It’s extremely dangerous, and it’s just an explosion waiting to happen.

“For the most part, they’ll pull into an area, spend a day, maybe two, cook up some meth, dump their spoils and then leave. If they don’t get caught, they might come back later,” Fahrni said.

The lab operating in the Tahoma State Forest was discovered by state Department of Natural Resources agent Jim Russell, who noticed some unmarked trails leading into the woods off a logging trail. A burn pile near the trail showed evidence of cold-pill wrappers and lithium batteries, both indicators of methamphetamine manufacture. And when Russell set up a surveillance of a plywood shack nearby, a dog started barking.

A man inside the shack ran into the woods, but a 19-year-old Tacoma, Wash., woman was arrested and later released on $25,000 bail.

Investigators equipped with full chemical protection gear moved into the forest, and the location of at least five chemical dump sites over a two-acre area prompted state officials to order the entire forest closed in case there might be more. The closure is effective at least until June 10.

“We shut down the forest because of the explosive danger involved and the unknown dangers we had of other sites,” Heryford said. “If hikers were to come in here and started messing around, we’re talking about buckets of goo. It could go anywhere from burns to fatalities.”

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Meth in the Woods

The number of methamphetamine labs and associated chemical dumps found on U.S. Forest Service land soared last year, as drug makers moved from urban areas to the forests.

Source: USDA Forest Service