By Brenda Walker

Vast tracts of our most treasured public lands, supposedly set aside in perpetuity for Americans, are no longer controlled by the United States government. Instead, they have been invaded and taken over by Mexico’s violent criminal drug organizations to grow marijuana.

Even more shocking: Mexican cartels have been growing marijuana for at least 10 years in  Sequoia National Park, one of the crown jewels of the system. Nature-loving hikers are compelled to accept that parts of Sequoia are "no go zones" during the growing season.

These Mexican marijuana messes are an ecological disaster. They are not innocent little plots that leave a minimal footprint. They are industrial grow sites, toxic stews where the gangsters use dangerous and illegal chemical herbicides, pesticides and growth hormones that result in long-lasting environmental damage.

National parks are supposed to be protected at the highest standard, preserving them for future generations in a pristine, unspoiled state. But he Mexican infestation has corrupted that idea to its core.

Drug czar John Walters testified to Congress in March that

"10 acres of forest are damaged for every acre planted with marijuana, with an estimated cost of $11,000 per acre to repair and restore land that has been contaminated with the toxic chemicals, fertilizers, irrigation tubing, and pipes associated with marijuana cultivation."

The Mexican gangsters (who are often illegal aliens) routinely cut down trees, divert streams with systems of PVC pipe and poach wildlife for food. Their operations are big business: In 2007, more than 20,000 plants were found in Yosemite National Park and 43,000 plants in Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park. The eradication operations cost the government millions of dollars, but today there is no money for the clean-up, so funds are either diverted from other projects or volunteers help out. Sadly, with budgets slim, park protection and maintenance do not rank high on Washington’s priorities. The problem gets worse every year.

In an eradication photo-op in mid-October, John Walters remarked, "Some of these groups not only engage in crime and violence not only in Mexico and along the border, but they come across and kidnap, murder and carry out assassinations… These groups do not respect the border." [US official: Mexican cartels murder, kidnap in US, Associated Press, October 19, 2008]

Walters spoke in Sequoia Park, where plots were first discovered in 1998. Since it’s tougher to smuggle pot post-9/11 because of increased border security and they can save money by eliminating transportation costs, the dealers grow pot stateside. The national forests have also been badly affected (see 2006 map).

In addition to the pollution, there is the danger to hikers of wandering into a booby-trapped pot grove guarded by Mexican thugs with full-auto weapons. Several law enforcement officers have been injured in altercations with growers. No hiker has been killed—yet.

This park destruction is reported every year, along with other harvest news. Camo-clad officers swoop down from military helicopters into hidden pot fields, arrest the caretakers and uproot the plants. Every summer-to-fall season brings the same predictable stories in the press:  

• 2008 Mexican marijuana cartels sully US forests, parks [AP, October 9]
   
• 2007 Cartels grow pot on ‘national treasures’ [Washington Times, July 16]
   
• 2006 Pot farms ravaging park land: Big raid in Marin County hints at the extent of damaging techniques by growers [San Francisco Chronicle, September 6]
   
• 2005 War of the weed [Los Angeles Times, August 9]
   
• 2004 Policing runs gamut from poaching to dead bodies [San Francisco Chronicle, August 17]
   
• 2003 Park’s Pot Problem Explodes [Los Angeles Times, May 14]
   
• 2002 Marijuana Found Thriving in Forests [New York Times, November 16]

And so it goes, in depressingly predictable fashion. The MainStream Media has actually done a decent job in shining a spotlight on the problem. But Washington has not reacted.

Citizens who know about the extent of the destruction (e.g. VDARE.com readers) ask: where the environmentalists are in organizing opposition to this fundamental affront to the conservation movement.

Unfortunately, the environmentalists who should be defending the parks don’t care that our natural heritage icons have been invaded and despoiled.

The flagship green organization, the Sierra Club, has said that it has "other priorities."  [War of the Weed, By Joe Robinson, LA Times, August 9, 2005]

The Sierra Club was once a stalwart non-partisan defender of the planet and enemy of pollution. The organization’s Mission Statement is a fine encapsulation of environmentalist values:

“To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth;
To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources;
To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.”

Would that the Sierra Club still lived up to its noble—and practical—purpose.

Interestingly, an October 9 article in the Santa Barbara Independent nailed the current nature of the Sierra Club by characterizing it as "a left-leaning organization that focuses on environment and nature conservation issues."[Sierra Club, PUEBLO Announce Endorsements, By Jenny Pedersen and Shannon Switzer] That description is perhaps more polite than calling Clubbers "socialists in hiking boots" but the point is identical: leftism is the primary concern, the environment secondary.

In order to build a bigger left wing (with help from puppetmaster moneybags George Soros), the Sierra Club has moved in recent years to partnership with Open-Borders extremists. Speaking out against Mexican criminals poisoning our protected lands doesn’t fit with the organization’s current politics.

As an example of the group’s new priorities, the Sierra Club has been deeply engaged in fighting against the US-Mexico border fence, despite the tons of trash left every year by illegal crossers. Obviously, the environmentally appropriate position would be pro-fence. But the leading organization of the environmental movement has gone over to the dark side.

The Sierra Club cashed in its conservationist integrity when it secretly accepted a donation of over $100 million on the condition that the organization not mention massive immigration/population growth as being environmentally harmful. The donor, Wall Street investor David Gelbaum, stated, "I did tell [Executive Director] Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.” [The Man behind the Land, By Kenneth R. Weiss, Los Angeles Times, October 27, 2004]

As a result of environmentalists’ corruption, no powerful voice prods Congress to stop Mexican crime syndicates taking over parklands. In particular, poison-drenched marijuana plots shouldn’t be allowed to grow to nearly harvest stage, when toxics and trash have reached maximum accumulation. Early intervention is required to prevent the Mexicans’ pollution, and that mean more surveillance, particularly using helicopters. But those measures mean more money and personnel. The political will has not been there in Washington.

What’s absent was well described by Chief Ranger Steve Shackelton of Yosemite Park.

"For years we’ve been seeing these people make millions of dollars in profit, while they devastate the environment on private property and California’s majestic public lands. They destroy habitat, pollute streams with poisons and nitrogen fertilizers, kill wildlife, and pose a fire threat. The only thing missing is public outrage," concluded Shackelton. [Marijuana Gardens Raided in Yosemite National Park, NPS Park News, August 14, 2007]

Western writer Wallace Stegner said: "National parks are the best idea we ever had." It is shameful that so little is being done today to preserve them—and how we citizens sleepwalk through the loss of national treasures to the vilest sort of exploitation by foreign criminals.

Mexican criminals target the parks because they are open places with a premium on freedom. Like America itself, they were designed for use by a responsible, law-abiding population. When gangs of ruthless drug dealers invade, it is a case of wolves amidst sheep.

If the parks are to be saved from destruction by foreigners, far more policing will be needed. That might alter the basic nature of the parks, but it may be too late in the day to worry about that. America’s borders have been open for too many years.

As things are, probably it will take the death of an innocent hiker to convince Washington to do what’s necessary—and to do it soon.

 By Joe Guzzardi

In July, when left Lodi for my new home in Pittsburgh, PA, I promised to read the News-Sentinel everyday to stay current on local events.

But two frustrating and troubling stories about English language learners in last week’s paper have caused me to reconsider. Maybe I shouldn’t go looking for headaches.

Specifically, News-Sentinel reporter Jennifer Bonnet outlined in her lead story “Ahead of Nationwide Trend,” the English development programs the Lodi Unified School District has created for the approximately 11,000—or 38 percent of total enrollment—of its Hispanic non-English speakers. [Ahead of Nationwide Trend, by Jennifer Bonnet, Lodi News-Sentinel, October 23, 2008]

Bonnet’s supplemental story, “Local Program Reaches Out to Children, Parents,” emphasized the importance of family reading and cultural awareness. [Local Program Reaches Out to Children, Parents, by Jennifer Bonnet, Lodi News-Sentinel, October 22, 2008]

The language curriculum commitment reflects the national trend that correlates to the United States’ ever-increasing illegal alien adult population and the children they bear.

Unfortunately, the programs are not unique to Lodi.  

In a sidebar to Bonnet’s story, various population statistics confirmed this same development throughout California: nearly two-thirds of all children living in the San Joaquin Valley are Hispanic, 25 percent of all its residents speak a language other than English at home and in Fresno County Hispanic residents make up 48 percent of the population.

Then there’s the national numbers: 11 million Hispanic students currently enrolled in K-12 and the staggering approximation that by 2050 a 116 percent increase in K-12 Hispanics will occur versus a non-Hispanic growth projected to be only 4 percent.

If those figures concern you, I have bad news. They reflect the least worrisome numbers relating to recent Hispanic immigrants to California.

Try these from the Census Bureau: in areas of high Hispanic concentration in southern California many adults are illiterate in their native language.

In Los Angeles, for example, 53 percent of its adults are illiterate and in south Los Angeles where the Hispanic concentration is the greatest, the illiteracy percentage hits 84 percent.

Their official classification is “low literate” meaning they can sign their name but cannot read a bus schedule or fill out a job application.

In my twenty years of teaching ESL, I have seen too many undereducated come into my classroom, stay a day or two, then leave without making any serious effort to learn. Worse, many who should be in class never bother.

My conclusion is that the programs consistently fail. Taken in their totality, they don’t warrant the financial outlay or the teacher time invested. You might as well light a match to your money.

Every statistic available today on English proficiency since I began teaching in 1986 is dramatically worse.

High among the reasons that the aggregate Hispanic population does not learn English is that illiterate people add to itself at a rapid rate. Between 2000 and 2006, the San Joaquin Valley’s Hispanic population increased from 30 percent to 36 percent. No end is in sight.

America is committing suicide. Our country is disappearing before our eyes.

Blame the United States government for failing to enforce immigration law. And fault the bloodsucking Mexican government that despite its enormous wealth refuses to provide for its citizens.

Bonnet’s stories referred to district “reach out” programs that advised non-English speaking parents of their rights and educational options.

However, it is important to understand that the responsibility for effective Mexican parenting and child rearing lies in Mexico.

Too bad for the United States that, like Mexico, it can’t export 25 percent of its underclass to Canada and then insist that the Canadian government educate, feed and provide medical care for them.

That’s the deal that Mexico has cut. And we’re the saps for going along.

Even Mexico is occasionally embarrassed by its parasitical behavior.

One year ago, the arrogant, hypocritical former Mexican president Vicente Fox appeared on the Larry King Live show shilling his new book about how the US benefits from, to use his word, “migration.”

Toward the end of the show, a caller asked Fox: “Don’t the leaders of Mexico feel ashamed that so many of their countrymen are leaving to find a better life in a country rather than their own?"

Fox, caught off guard, replied: “It’s our main obligation, our first obligation, to build up these opportunities in Mexico for our own people.”

Despite Fox’s pledge, last year in Mexico was the same as the one hundred that preceded it: everything for the rich, nothing for the poor except a push out the door toward the U.S.

Joe uzzardi [email him] is a California native who recently fled the state because of over-immigration, over-population and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life. He has moved to Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the growth rate stable. A long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It currently appears in the Lodi News-Sentinel.