#1340 - John Nores

Aug 26, 2019

John Nores has served as a game warden with the California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. There he co-developed the Marijuana Enforcement Team (MET) and Delta Team, the CDFW's first comprehensive wilderness spec ops tactical and sniper unit, aimed at combatting the marijuana cartel's decimation of California's wildlife resources.

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was you know game wardens most of the time what you're doing is making sure people don't catch fish when they're not supposed to and things along those lines well they started finding illegal Mexican drug cartel marijuana grows out in public land and it became incredibly dangerous and really stunning and it shows you how dangerous it is that we have this federal law against marijuana that it's federally illegal and so of course criminals are selling it and this this podcast I hope really highlights all the problems with that anyway he's amazing and he did amazing work and continues to amazing Works got a book out right now it's called hidden war and it's all about the subject so please welcome John Norris

The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day

boom all right we're luck hello John what's up man how are you Joe how you doing thanks for doing so really appreciate it thanks a lot for having your Manuel right I heard you on mediator podcast and it blew my mind I mean I could not believe let's just let everybody know what this is about you were a game warden are you are game warden right and what that normally entails is like you know you find a guy and he's got three trout when he's only supposed to have two normal stuff like catchy check catching people doing something they're not supposed to just make sure people follow the rules along the way you guys started discovering these illegal grow Ops where cartels were growing marijuana and you turn from being a regular game warden to essentially well once you let us know what how it worked out yeah Joe it was it was a crazy Journey because you don't think of game wardens doing the type of work we were doing when it come to the trespass crushing the car till issue you know and

what do everybody think they think a more is check fishing licenses yeah check your gear tagger out tag look for too many you know animals poaching spotlighting and honestly when I started the job I got hired back in 1992 that's what I dreamed of doing you know I grew up hunting and fishing and I got my hunter safety certificate with dads help in nine years old so I was all in the woods you know the woods are my church I just loved it because three generations of family my grandfather's career Navy my dad you know as an army guy and you know we just had conservation in our family you know for Generations so I got the job didn't I did all the traditional stuff to start came down here to Southern California to start my career in Riverside County so I was just over the hill you know from from La here and working all the traditional stuff fishing regulations night hunting you know working dear openers is really cool to be a deer hunter for all those years and then actually go you know talk to guys on the other side and see all the good guys out there and some problems and then in 1995 I

go back home toward the Silicon Valley that's where I'm originally from born and raised so live in the suburbs kind of the foothill areas of the Silicon Valley south of San Jose there and in 2004 I've stumbled into my first you know cartel what we call a trespass marijuana grow site and you know to specify this stuff now that we're regulating you know the last couple of years here in California these are not sanction marijuana sites this isn't the legitimate industry that's doing it by the numbers and trying to this is always illegal these are always here you know on public lands destroying our environmental waterways and our wildlife and on private land as well and on that situation had a good friend of mine that I grew up with that was doing his master's thesis at San Jose State University both of our alma mater on steelhead trout endangered species red-legged yellow-legged frog and all the aquatics in these two creeks and this was right below Henrico State Park where I really met my first game or in there was an inspiration to get the job so these waterways

really sensitive Headwaters coming down through this stretch for like 3 miles all these endangered species in it black-tail deer you know all these other great animals we like is conservationist they're thriving on this Creek and he called me one day in April and said hey John this is weird one of my two Creeks is bone dry and all the fish the steelhead fryer dead you know everything living on this Creek is dead there's a bunch of like debris and plastic lining and looks like camping stuff that's down at the bottom of where this Creek Feeds out so I get them in the truck and I figured I'm thinking okay someone's diverting water up there it's probably a Rancher Nina for cattle operation whatever we go the top of the hill Joe then we start the hike down and I'm by myself you know I got my uh my got my rifle got my gear don't have any radio coverage don't have any cell phone coverage and I have an unarmed civilian my partner biologist with me and we're expecting to find something very predictable that I'd seen up to that point and that would have been a normal water diversion and

we found the Water Source in a beautiful Canyon I mean crystal clear water Trout Creek the whole nine start hiking down at following this we see the damn see the water line about a hundred yards down this beautiful Little Grand Canyon like Creek and there's much marijuana plants and their short because it's early in the season they're only about two feet tall and we see to Growers and they're not the Growers on tip you know that I would have suspected these guys are you know they got rifles they got handguns they got knives and they're kind of cruising work in their plants coming toward us and that was that oh shit moment you know if something crazy goes down right now and I got no backup I got a civilian with me these guys are armed they're not your typical poacher that I've ever encountered and we didn't get seen we kind of hid out you know he's a hunter I'm a Hunter we stayed you know using our stocking and stand to the creek bank and just just watch as these guys work their Plantation and went on up the hill and I looked at this and went would we just walk into this is crazy

we got out safely and that's when I started to bring in other agencies narcotic groups task Force's the Sheriff's Office met you know started to learn other agencies in my area this is really on in the game what did you guys do about that one grow up like when you found it like how did they resolve that well we got a team together as fast as we could safely and usually it takes a couple of weeks and I want to say within a month we were back there now the interesting part was game wardens aren't known for doing this type of work just like you said the start right so they're like well you guys know the area you went in there help us find it get us into the area but we're going to lead the raid and we'll set of course this is your jurisdiction we don't normally do this type of stuff so so go for it so we were the bird dogs we kind of guided him into the area we had like 20 30 officers we kind of let him down to the canyon got them in there safely we found the to Growers we spooked on they didn't get caught that day they ran down the canyon nobody pursued some

us wanted to obviously because the environmental damages but the biggest thing that changed the game for me that day was seeing the environmental damage so that was a seven thousand plant garden and at the time we didn't know about these band toxic substances these insecticides carbo fear and that they're bringing up from Tijuana and transporting actually smuggling from cross the border to put on these plants to keep everything living off of it not to impact their cash crop and that was out there in some extent but it was so early when weren't really aware of the level of toxicity to this stuff and how damaging it is so it was all new but we eradicated that garden and then when we were done eradicating it we had all this mess in the creek right we had Camp trash we had fertilizers pollutants propane tanks all over in this beautiful Channel That's now dry because it's been diverted unbeknownst us all that water was totally poisoned that they were diverting to water the plants that's why that Creek was so dry

and we eradicated everything and then it was like okay we're out of here and I looked around and went wait a minute man

I know we got the I know we got the illegal marijuana out but what are we going to do about all this environmental damage and nobody was Reclamation the damage or cleaning up in here this mess so I the first thing I thought was we have a resource issue that's crazy I mean I've you know spent my whole career up to this point protecting Wildlife preserving waterways for all of us to enjoy you know conservationist Enthusiast whatever side of the fence you're on and nothing was getting done on that so kind of the lightbulb went off a little bit that we need to do more to this if we're going to get involved and we need to get involved in these type of grow operations because it was a biggest environmental you know train wreck I'd ever seen and I'd worked a lot of traditional game warden stuff to protect those resources so once they had gotten a never went out and got Chopped all the plants up or did what they did did they try to reclaim the the creek do they try to remove the dam and get the water to run back again at that time no no one is doing it right and that's that's

actually roller what really really kind of upset me and again we were new at the game we were the game wardens nobody really thought of us as Mainline law enforcement or you know narcotics task force guys or anything like that at the time so I wasn't going to make waves we just wanted to integrate and work together we wanted to unify these teams and what I really wanted to do at this point is get back with my command staff and you know my boss isn't go hey we got a big big problem out there man and right there's more of this going on and we need to be involved even though it's not traditional because were sworn to protect our resources and well besides everything game wardens do that you think of from the wildlife standpoint we're Mainline law enforcement just like every police officer right we go through the same training and then what people don't realize is we go through two more months of additional training in a really long Academy that's all Wildlife specific Wildlife forensics Wildlife ID weapons identification all the things you really need to do the game or inside of it with Wildlife you know in the back country so to speak

but we needed to integrate with other agencies and kind of bring them into our world if we were going to participate so that one case started the change in me to try to build those relationships and get into tactics and tactical circles with some of these you know SWAT and Special Operations units so we go in and do this job under normal circumstances if that was just being diverted by a Rancher so for rancher done that and the creek was dry how would you how would you fix that we would have got with him and it's what's called a stream that alteration violation and in 1602 in our fish and game code is the section but and it's a very common section because water is diverted for a lot of reasons and you can divert water with a permit in certain circumstances but you can't completely denuded a creek that has Wildlife thriving that's a Waterway of the state for everybody to enjoy which this one was and if normally the case would be that they would have to Reeve just have the the flow come back to exactly how it was before to remove the dam and yep that would be up to the Rancher

that would be up to the Rancher be part of a penalty you know it could be a civil it could be a criminal it could be a probationary fix it in your okay so there was no real there's no law involved or nothing in place rather to when you found these grow-ops like there was no previous precedent exactly it was it was completely brand-new and this was you know one of the first grows I think that any of us have found throughout the state of California as game wardens I mean there are other guys find in some things and working but being from the Silicon Valley and being inspired by those wild lands to everything I became later and what I stand for it was home you know when it hit home but seeing that and getting to meet certain guys from the sheriff's department in my first book goes into this whole learning experience of you know ad hoc jumping in with other agencies and doing it is this a hidden War this was the first book more in the woods war in the woods so you wrote War in the woods and then hidden Wars a new one yeah hidden words the brand new and that just came out in there basically ten years apart and the cool part about that Joe is when you look

the differences we do some major comparisons and what war in the woods covers is that chapter ones at first mission I'm telling you all right now because I was like bing what year it is right now we're not in Kansas anymore so it's crazy did the people of the higher-ups yeah that we're in charge of trying to eradicate the grow up and take the cartel two guys down what so there that was their job was just handling that it was just handling the the marijuana aspect of it right right and the the armed cartel guys so there was no one in place that was supposed to take care of the Waterway there wasn't that seems so crazy to me it does it was one of those things that it was it was based on the fact that a conservation group like from an agency like fish and wildlife like us we just weren't involved where we would be looking at those environmental damages right right but from a Narcotics officer standpoint you may see the damages but it may not register there might not be a you know a mandate or even objective to clean that stuff up and and back of the time DEA

was funding all of our states and all of our County teams based on the number of marijuana plants we eradicated so there wasn't any recognition of the environmental damages and any type of funding based on how much Reclamation and clean up you didn't know I would change fortunately and we were that we were a big part of making that change fortunately but and there wasn't a lot of funding or you know Point Kickback or value to catch some bad guys to catch in some of these guys that were doing the damages so a lot of teams then we're dropping it on helicopter lines cut and plants getting a big plant count getting funded for it taken taken the weed out and I was it that's so crazy like yeah I would imagine I mean obviously I don't work in law enforcement but I would imagine there would be one person who would like detail plan right and I would think that well what happened well we found out that this Creek was dry air okay we got to resume the creek yeah wouldn't that be like part of the plan it would

you would think it should be right what's also basically new territory completely new and so we're only talking about 15 years ago as well which is really crazy yeah it was it was the start of a big shift in my career because I saw this as a big problem I also up until in 2005 we were on you know one of our first second third since third operation since this one we just mentioned in 2004 and in August 5th 2005 the game completely changed because that's when we were involved in our first gunfight and that's when my partner Warden who trained in the academy we were Partners in the squad I had promoted to be Lieutenant for two-and-a-half counties the Silicon Valley Santa Clara County Monterey part of San Benito 20 days before this incident happened and I had young wardens that wanted to participate and do some of the stuff I was doing with the other agencies on the marijuana you know operational front

and this was you know right above the tech capital of the world right there in Silicon Valley Los Gatos we were in really steep arid Country Now August right before the a Zone Deer opener we are all gearing up for that and was three game wardens three Sheriff's officers good Sheriff's officers that we met on that first operation in 2004 I just gave you the story on and they were in Harvest time they were fortified they had heavy weapons like SKS is the AK-47 derivative sawed-off shotguns and they have the gross set up where they were basically defending it and when we came in there was an ambush shot from one of the Growers and that was the one shot the bad guys got off and unfortunately that's the shot that hit my partner through both legs and that bullet went through the right thigh and tumbled through his right leg then kept going through his left so he's down and we're trying to keep him from bleeding out of four holes for the better part of three hours waiting for an air rescue and we had you know nobody in the country from the standpoint of a law enforcement

team had ever been counter attacked by these Growers we just you know we chase them around they run away sometimes we find weapons often times we wouldn't but so this was just a real eye-opening like what the fuck did we just walk into and plus my partner was real close to not making it and fortunately he did survive or I don't know that we'd be sitting here telling this story and talking about it but that day when I saw how well they were equipped the type of Weaponry they had and the fact that I don't almost didn't come home that day I went okay this is super dangerous we can't do this a standard Patrol gay morons we can't do this do and just the traditional stuff we should stay involved in it because aside from being so violent the environmental damage is Jill where the worst I'd still ever seen and they just kept getting worse and worse the more operations that work in my home County right so we learned a lot from that there were a lot of tactical lessons there are a lot of Team lessons a lot of things we could have done different and that kind of changed the game where we eventually got to what we're going to talk about a little bit later now since

thousand and four have there been plans implemented to clean up and also restore waterways and all the different absolutely yeah absolutely and so now there's like a whole they realize this is an issue and so there's there's precedent there's very much so and and that largely came from what we saw you know in those early years the 2004 first stop on down there on Dexter Canyon Creek and then what we had on Sierra's little my partner was shot in 2005 about then we started also see the band poisons in these grows like the carbo fear on bottles and just to give a background this stuff is so deadly it was made as an insecticide or rodenticide just to kill anything that you put on any type Agricultural Product and it was made originally back and I think like the 50's for legitimate Agriculture and then they found out how toxic it was and EPA banned it from use or even possession it's a felony to have it in the country and use it anywhere without special licenses through legitimate channels here in America

they began to like 15 years ago because it was so nasty but because it does keep everything off the marijuana plants I mean nothing can even get near it without dying almost instantly they still get it in third world countries they can get it in Mexico and it gets smuggled across the border with the grow groups the the drug trafficking groups because it's so effective regardless how poison it is and we were starting to see more and more of that stuff as we were starting to ramp more of a specialty to do in this job more you know thoroughly and safely and get into the cleanup this is one of the many thing I brought this up with Dan Crenshaw the other day and I talked about you and because he's against federally making marijuana federally legal and I said one of the problems with it being illegal is this and I was explaining these grow-ops that for the rest of the country where marijuana is illegal right the vast majority like what was the number that you said the percentage that was is grown in California that's illegally sold through the rest of the country 70 80 percent so it's 70 to 80 percent of the entire

marijuana population or marijuana product that you're buying if you live in a place like South Dakota where ever I don't even know what's legal in South Dakota where ever it's illegal they're buying it from here exactly and that's because one of the reasons is because our state laws say that well first of all we're close to Mexico so the cartel members can come up really quickly right and then the other problem is that our state laws one we made marijuana legal recreationally here week severely lowered the penalty for an illegal grow-op became a misdemeanor correct that was the that was the thing you know when we started the department special team that the spec ops marijuana enforcement team that had more goes into part of my job is being the co-founder of that and the team leader was Outreach so I was speaking to legislative groups before we legalized under prop 64 and then the tighter medicinal marijuana laws that that came about that same time and I was talking to anybody

Asian groups that you and I would you know be part of preservation animal rights groups high school kids you know assemblies right watch out you know if you're using we'd make sure you're not using this stuff because it's so nasty things like that and my whole point was if we're going to regulate guys we see a common let's just regulate smart let's not lessen any penalties for the trespass grow that the cartels are doing in our public lands and private lands and also the other gang groups and there's there's other groups you know to a smaller extent but unfortunately when we did regulate and all that was passed two years ago they did water it down so publicly and cultivation went you like you said it's a felony to a misdemeanor and if you're a juvenile cultivator on public private land and one of these juvenile you know cartel members and there's a lot of young ones learning it's a it's an infraction and that took a lot of emphasis away from that part of the problem and left us out there basically alone with a couple other agencies to fight it well for the average person that would sound before you knew about the cartel gross

that would sound like a good idea well hey if marijuana is legal what's the problem what's the big deal exactly then the other problem is these people that are buying this marijuana in the rest of the country it's highly likely that they're going to have some of that pesticide on it right and how bad is that stuff is that stuff ever killed someone from smoking this illegal marijuana we don't know if it's killed anybody directly because by the time it gets distributed throughout the country it does dissipate a little bit but it's still highly toxic to put it in perspective about three years ago we had to Federal officers back East not even in California in a public land grow that had all that toxic on it so they have cartel grows out there they do they do they actually Coast we have them in about 20 25 to 27 other states to a much lesser extent and something we need to look at is California I mean we're one of only six Mediterranean climates on the whole globe so we are a great weird growing stage just like our wine industry man we got great great weather for it so we can grow outdoors and indoors

where's I mean February to almost December right and that's why it's grown here and that's why the black market both in you know the private land communities in the cartels are everywhere across the country with this stuff but they'll go wherever they can to you know diversify the network so we do have it in other states to a much lesser extent and then something we need to remember is even though about half the country has these grows in them to a lesser extent in California the same groups are under the same Enterprise that are you doing human trafficking doing gun-running you know to feel the fight down in Mexico methamphetamine production and now the new synthetic fentanyl that's just killing thousands especially on the East Coast are coming from these groups so it's all one Enterprise and of course we focus on the Cannabis issue because that's what's affecting our wild lands in our waterways it's right at the Hub so yeah it is it's Nationwide it's not a California problem and we made really really careful even though we're talking about a team in California game wardens were trying to tell a nationwide

or because the nation needs to know well it seems like you've I mean not just seems like it is you guys were not trained for this right and there was no one else there so it was like like hey put it on the game wardens they're going to have to handle this now which is really to me kind of insane it is but then at the flipside we're really passionate about protecting what you and I love right our wild lands in our waterways and our Wildlife especially so we have a passionate interest in protecting you know those resources and not to mention keeping our public safe in the same in the same breath because these are in public areas I mean we have a lot of these national parks we have like you know not only you have the armed gunmen they could you know shoot a hunter or hiker an equestrian anybody in the outdoors and enjoys are you know what the Great Outdoors have to offer but you have you know all the other threats that come with that you know it's not just an armed gunman they're putting punji pit it's literally vietnam-era punji pit Sun some of these Trails wait upon

you put four people don't know absolutely so back in the Vietnam conflict with the Viet Cong when do to deter our American soldiers as they dig a pit Underground on a trail and if you about 18 to 20 inches deep and you know Square to kind of cover whole Trail then they cover it up with bamboo or Leaf litter so it just look like the trail and then our soldiers would kind of walk and they'd step into that and here's the sharpened sticks out of bamboo that are super sharp and they're pointed upwards so when you step into it you're going to share a shin you're going to puncture you know your leg maybe an artery and they would put human excrement excuse me on the points to induce bacteria and yeast infection and basically take our soldiers you know out of the operation what we started seeing 2015 and the first one you found was actually a national park up in Shasta County and Whiskeytown and it was a punji pit going into a grow site on a public Trail I mean it was hundreds of yards Joe from The Grow but anybody could have walked in on it we were running an operation which has to County and this

we had our full-time dedicated team in the hidden War era and our Point man was about to step into this thing and Arcanine Phoebe that I'm sure you know we talked about it on Steven show that I'm a meat eater and also Mike ritland who has a show called mic drop and he's a Seal Team three veteran and canine trainer a really got into the dog stories right we talked about that but Phoebe amazing dog she had been trained to sniff these band poisons so she could smell it you know a mile out with that amazing knows our canines have and right before our Point man was about to step into it Phoebe alerted and Brian pulled everybody back her Handler my teammate and sure enough he did some digging and pulled back the tarp and then here's this punji pit and it had the band toxics actually on the sticks so what would that have done if one of us had stepped into it so that was a real aggressive anti-personnel technique that could have you know that could have decimated a hunter or hiker yeah or anybody else oh so that was Wildlife or Wildlife yeah some of

pit traps for wildlife and these big you know Wells they're doing and in cisterns and they're doing this to keep people out or they're doing this for animals like what are they what are they doing something like that is has to be targeted against people but we have there's a lot of different things for animals to there's a lot of things to keep animals away from the plants they'll do you know they'll dig big pit traps that are the put garbage in them or they'll use them like when we were in the middle of our really severe drought that we just came out of here in California a couple years ago all these mountains streams were just bone dry so they would go to the lower lands and we were doing a lot of work you know in the Delta region of Sacramento Delta and the lowlands and they even if they you know we're getting water from the Delta and the Raceland would dry up they would dig and dig Wells 20 30 feet deep and the leave them open and they're getting water from them and pumping out water out of the bottom but those stay open so yeah our big air big game animals drop into those or we could drop into them so multiple multiple hazards yeah exactly what is this is

an estimate of how many cartel members are growing in this country right now but if you say there's 27 28 States is that what you said what is the is there a rough estimate of how many cartel members are here right now doing this kind of this kind of shit you know it's a real approximation because you only know based on who you catch your crying been able to debrief but like in California we know from the amount of grows we deal with every year just on the trespass you know cartel front and the number of operatives it takes to run a grow and get it started and then harvested I mean conservative estimate 10,000 10,000 yeah I'd say contemporary just California just in California and the reason we say that and I always go very conservative because it's such a kind of a silent Enterprise and it's really hard to get some of this data but we've just validated it through the numbers of things we run across you know when you look at the fact that it takes to skill Growers that are vetted because they cut their teeth down to Mexico doing it effectively

the federales Snows and they grow well and and you mentioned this when you at Mike Baker on the show which was interesting and you hit it on the head when you said man these guys are really resourceful you know you got to respect their work ethic and now and you have to because they're they're hiking waterline they're hiking infrastructure in they're covering their tracks they're out there for six months at a time do you said there were walking around with carpet strapped to their feet so they didn't leave Footprints yeah in Hidden War especially we have a whole lot of photos in that book about things we've seen on trail cameras and they will put felt lined lined soft felt on their shoes time uptight and if they're walking like an Old Forest Road you know this got a gravel base you'll never see that track I mean you know you've tracked big game I've done it you know it's same type of technique and if you don't have any sign I mean the really good at disguises and we actually found a guy and I have a picture of this in the book and also in the PowerPoint when I when I teach to this throughout the country cow hooves

a carved out of wood because a couple years ago we were you know the u.s. forest service a lot of this grow problem is on our national forests you know Northern California North Eastern California not so much Silicon Valley where I started but the rest of the state even down here and what these guys do is there's cattle leases on those properties where you know ranchers can run cattle and part of the forest and you know or a joint on private property and we were getting tips on a bunch of grows you know we've seen him from the air or Hunter angler would report them or we'd have a suspicion because of a Waterway and we get see some plants from satellite or whatever and we go try to find this grown we weren't picking up tracks and we're you know we were pretty good at finding these things now we've been trial and error in it for a lot of years but we're seeing a lot of cattle tracks because we're running around with cows and sure enough they were putting on cow hooves and strapping them on top or underneath their boots clomping around to disguise themselves as cattle clever right and then once I get way up into a deep Canyon where they're going to put their grow they just take them off

Romina backpack and then the light bulb went off we better look at you know our tracks a little more carefully so how do you guys try to go about finding these things do you do rely on people reporting them or do you have like aerial surveys like how do you its a mix of all of that we get a lot of reports from people in the ground and our best reporting parties or what we call our peas are hunters and Anglers hmm when it comes to the outdoor public but anyone in the outdoors could run across some but hunters and Anglers especially because where do we go when we're going to find a good water hole for Elk or you know we're hunting right tail we're going to go you know we're not going to stay on the beaten path man we're going to go down to the headwaters we're going to find a pristine area we're going to get away from people so there are the people that are going the deepest into the backcountry absolutely absolutely and then they're finding the water you know source and there maybe they're following it and it's dry or it's diverted like what I found in 2004 that started this whole craziness and then they run into a grow

we also do find it from the air you know we do all agencies it's no no secret no tactical reveal we fly look for this stuff from the air I have a friend of found one on Tejon Ranch really yeah yeah a few years back and I didn't think anything of it I thought it was just some crazy person decided to try to grow pot yes is back before was recreationally legal okay and there was no shootout or anything crazy like that they do here they got there after yeah either they realized that their grow up had been compromised and they took off but you know to hone Ranch has enormous it's like 270,000 Acres yeah and just the gall of these guys to go deep into that ranch and set up this grow site right and the guys who work there they I guess they just stumbled upon it I think they stumbled upon it because they're garbage too if I remember correctly yeah that that follows track in the thing now you're talking about a private hunting ranch it's got a catalyst and all that tones huge we've done a lot of good stuff with tone Ranch and support

no good hunting programs there but an interesting statistic when I retired last year in December and 2018 you know I mean we keep stats ever since one of the cool things about the are specialized team start in 2013 is we solidified all the documentation to be spot-on you know reporting was kind of haphazard throughout the stay we weren't sure what other agencies were doing but we knew what we were doing now and so I'm keeping that data and there was a real shift in just public land presence of these cartel Growers and by the time I retired last year I was almost a 50/50 split so ranches liked own ranch a private hunting club in the Silicon Valley one up in Shasta County so you know where they're doing big-time conservation projects to get black tail and mule deer and tule elk and everything else up in numbers and now they've got this presence on their hunting club hitting one of their sensitive waterways you know so so it's not just a public land thing and its really good for everybody listening to know that you could find it anywhere and you stumbled on it and it's funny you mentioned the reporting party

so cool thing after I did Steve and show on a mediator and talk to those guys we sort of get tips well I actually got a tip and you know and it's in play and I won't say too much more about it but we'll definitely will be talking when it's all over and done but it's going to get handled and it's so cool to see the guys like you and I that hunt and love it and love the passion of what's out there are out there stumbling on this stuff and getting out safely and we're fired up enough not to wait you know we're calling people to say hey it's out there can you help us or it's the warden Sheriff's are you ever guys getting an sense of hikers or anyone getting shot at or it's happened it's happened fortunately it doesn't happen a lot where we have a lot of fatalities but I want to say about five six years ago we had a father-daughter combination on a deer hunt up in one of the D zones in North Eastern California and there were shot at by kartell Growers going in on a deer opener to try to harvest her first deer you know she was coming up through the program shoes yeah it was horrible Unfortunately they weren't hurt they got out of the area they

ported it we've got people run out of you know run out of gardens bye-bye some of these Growers we have have other shots fired and we've had people just stay out of areas because once they see it or they see a guy holding a weapon like that in a marijuana Plantation they know isn't legit they're out of there so is there an area where they I mean it's all public land mostly or and private land ranchland right but is there an area of the state where they there's more of them you know that's what I thought when I started I mean you hear about the humble you know Unity the Emerald Triangle right where the just the Hub of it and I thought it was more prevalent there and it's certainly massive up there but I mean from Silicon Valley where I'm from you wouldn't think of those Foothills in that part of the state you know being so overrun and during those what I call you know the formative years of learning this and getting involved in it and specializing in it we were really I got to give a shout-out to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office and the guys then they took us on as equals And my partner's

really brought us in as you know not only tacticians but tracking and able to identify sign as wardens doing the hunting thing in the woods where we could go and really specialized it this and and be a lot safer and do a lot better than when my partner got shot no five and we were doing 25 public and private land cartel gross in the Silicon Valley at least 20 to 25 season geez that's a ton that's insane and that doesn't seem I mean just want your only on for folks who don't know what the season is explain that yeah the eradication season what we call the you know the grow season when we operate the heaviest is usually

an early start would be sometime mid-may and then we go all the way to like about the end of September and I mean there's you know there's some wiggle room on both ends of that depending on water and how long the winter goes but for made a pretty much stand to September so it's going on just somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six months and you're looking at 25 yeah operations yeah and that's in just Santa Clara County as an example and we when we form the full-time team in 2013 and we had representatives and we have Representatives on our marijuana enforcement team are fishing you know our agency specific team we would we have guys covering every part of the state and responsible team members spread out covering every County and as of now and we've been well we had six full operational years before I retired now it's in good hands in the team's doing fantastic work we've had a great at least a grow if not several in every county in the state and most counties multiple so to put it in perspective on an average year our team of 225 missions if

more so that's a hundred twenty-five grow sites that we were responsible for doing the work up the planning going in and doing the apprehension the stocking to catch these guys with our canines and with our tactics then doing the eradication and 90% of them are all you know tainted in that Ferdinand the carbo fear and sometimes to the point that it's so freshly applied that we can't touch the plants for a couple of weeks we can't even even with protective Gear Well nitrile gloves face protection Mass the whole nine this is that dangerous that dangerous and no exaggeration put in perspective the two officers on the federal level that were exposed just ingested some of those fumes and you get blindness you get nausea you can't breathe they were out of circulation fortunately not fatally but they're out of circulation for weeks sometimes months and federal OSHA came down with the forest service and of course working closely from the state level we suddenly were under a lot of protocol on decontamination what we couldn't touch and you know new new basic

for our safety for human safety came down and it changed the game so these guys putting this stuff on there we may not be able to even touch the plants or even cut them safely or put them in Nets and contaminate all our gear until it has a chance to sit dissipate a little bit and that's 14 days so what would you guys do if you stumbled upon something you knew that it was freshly applied would you just have a bunch of office or standby and guard the area to make sure these guys didn't come back to try to reclaim the plants it's best we could because here's the problem with that you know you get a big grow and you know you can't go in and touch these things for you know a couple of weeks maybe could be I mean it could have been applied that day it could have been applied for days ago we hit it we're not sure so we'll give it a 14 day window what will keep an eye on it but at the same time we're doing all these other missions right and we're not getting everything and it how deep we're talking in I mean would guys have to Camp there sometimes yeah sometimes so your guard can hike and yeah we've set on Gross we've camped out overnight for several days we've surveilled

uh points and you know watched you know these guys come and go and try to make sure they don't come back and you have limited resources to begin with right so you guys are the initial jobs to protect wildlife and you're supposed to be doing that so how much of an impact has that had on Wildlife because you guys have been diverted to these illegal grow Ops exactly well you know you hear the term the thin green line right yeah and kind of what I'm all about being a game warden and now in Phase 2 and retirement I'm really trying to speak more nationally to what the thin green line is and it's never been thinner and the thin Green Line basically just represents you know game wardens and forest rangers border patrol but from the wildlife and the military of course but from a while I protector standpoint now that we have this cartel grow problem and you just hit it on the head rather look at the resources it takes and all that traditional stuff that we used to do that we still do those problems aren't going away right so we still have to check you know the Night Hunter we still have to deal with commercial Wildlife sales and all this the ivory importation issue in the wildlife trafficking that's just blowing up

so we're getting thinner and thinner and stretched further and further game warden numbers aren't growing very much anywhere in the country yet the population in the impacts of people destroying Wildlife especially on this cartel front just keep as a sir baiting you guys are in charge of ivory importation as well we deal with all that yeah wow yeah we have teams now in our agency in most of the states do call Wildlife trafficking teams and it was a good program that came out of the Obama Administration that all the states had to do it we were kind of already doing it but we had to formalize a little bit and that was an added challenge that happened right after we formed the whole cannabis enforcement program which started with with the Tactical Unit that I you know Co formed and ran and then all these Watershed enforcement teams popped up for cannabis regulation to check the new licensed Growers people trying to do it legitimately and water use and make sure there weren't you know abuses then Wildlife trafficking became a huge issue the commercialization of wildlife is a huge billion dollar industry worldwide on everything

Abalone to sturgeon Road black bear gall bladders and now Ivory especially the black belt girl gallbladder one is so weird and crazy yeah it's it's just it's like a Chinese medicine thing right yeah yeah it's an aphrodisiac yeah but it's not know it's not real but in Albert I think it's BC no BC even though black bear hunting is legal for food you know you can't open up the stomach contents right they don't allow them to gut it because they don't want people to be incentivized to sell gallbladder grab that goal so strange so you can eat the bear yeah but you can't even open up the cavity the body cavity so like heart goes to waste other parts that people might eat yeah yeah which we never like to see so strange it is but again it gets back to Greed and profit and market right when a gall bladder can be worth forty thousand or more wives he's yeah 40,000 yeah that's me like that's how much a gall bladder can be

black market right is a frickin crazy and it doesn't do anything yeah crazy it doesn't but because it believed that it does and it's one of those exotic said I got to have and I like it black rhino horn that kind of like yeah exactly like like rhinos range so we I did a lot of that type of work before I went into this this met focus and it just shows you how many challenges game wardens have to do and it's not you know the old traditional game were just out checking those licenses anymore I mean and overwhelmed we're overwhelmed yeah that's no exaggeration now because this is now a problem that people are aware of there have been significant resources that have been allocated to try to handle this stuff like hers are there new like programs to train these young officers coming up to is there like a specific task force that handles that and then the rest of the guys handle fish and wildlife or is it just same people but now you have a whole different level of responsibility yeah that it's really cool in California because we are one of the most Progressive you know game warden

is and it's interesting because I just spoke at the back in July I spoke at the new wioa conference which is basically the annual game wardens conference for all of us from all over the country so get to work with all the states and you know Florida has some Tactical Unit for some stuff Texas has it and we're the first state to have a dedicated you know kind of Tactical Unit for this this cartel growth read because it's so big in California but to share that with everybody nationally in my world in the thin green line and for them to start having it happening on the refuges and even just a know this stuff's getting back to their parts of the world and poisoning their cannabis users you know unsuspectingly horrible information right but we need to know it and a lot of guys didn't know it and so that was one thing to see hey we need to have a baseline training and the way we do it here in California is we all go through a really stringent Academy everyone gets their basic tools arrest control and defensive tactics she owned firearms training all of that and get good at being the traditional game warden

and all the traditional stuff and they get you know get their feet wet out doing their own thing for a couple of years and then we start to find the people that have the motivation or want to get on to a specialized unit like our met team or one of the Watershed teams or Wildlife trafficking team very seldomly do we put a fresh person there because you know I think to really be a good game warden you got to cut your teeth on all the traditional stuff that's critical of just how into having to check guys with guns all the time you know most cops look at that and go that's crazy I mean everybody you check has a knife or a firearm yeah well fortunately 99% of them are guys like you and me that want to see a game warden and game warden wants to see us but for that one felon that's on parole and he's in the woods hiding out and we run across that a lot and I ran across a ton of that down here and So Cal really at the start of my career and I've got some interesting stories about that but so guys who are like the skip bail and then they go and hide yep and they've got like a no-bail warrant their wanted on some warrant somewhere and so the raw fish

and they have an illegal firearm maybe they're a felon in possession of a firearm they can't even have and now they're out in a remote area where no cops going to find me here and then on the new game warden in Riverside County you know all frickin motivated really green I don't know totally what I'm doing yet and I'm in that truck cruising in something I got into down here that was just crazy but I will say this was a heck of a learning curve and I'm really blessed to went out the way it did and it was I was safe in it but we would get gangbangers from from La here and they would go over in a Riverside County and get into my kind of rural you know Foothills and on the edge of the national forest and they'd have AK-47s and they'd have you know automatic pistols and they would Spotlight through these Canyons gun and for everything they kill rabbits to kill coyotes they kill deer they get to the end of like a canyon that has like a an outlet of a damn throw a gill net out and spend all night they're just Gill net and fish and hunting freely and shooting and killing everything with her spotlights grab their gillnet grab hundreds of fish

pack up and then head back you know back to the LA Basin gangbangers I'm not kidding and the craziest pushing gangbangers yeah commercial almost commercial fishing does it does it sounds nuts all right and what would they do with the fish oh they'd eat them maybe they'd sell them you know who knows usually with quantities that big they were getting sold but the thing it was crazy as I would be you know alone I'd be in my truck I didn't have a canine yet you know and now I just I just retired with well like your Marshal I have Apollo yellow lab English lab she's amazing never going to bite a bad guy but you gotta lick them to death and try to try to you know turn them our way but I didn't have a companion dog at the time and I would go and run into these guys and go okay this is what I learned in the academy that you know that that head on spotlighting stop that you never want to have or get in behind and blacked out and tracking them down and next thing I know I got a case and I got all these freaking prohibit exotic weapons and I'm going this is crazy I'm pulling these guys out alone I don't have a lot of it was just you it was just me how many guys did you run into

sometimes would be to one night I pulled like eight people out of a man oh shit and I was alone oh shit and they were all armed and it was one of my heaviest most intense cases and I had been on one year so this was 1994 and what we were doing in the Riverside Squad as we were just saturating the area because we're getting everybody from over in the LA side here Spotlight on all our games were like okay let's saturate this and back then Joe the game was to catch a spotlight or red-handed because they're so deliberate explain Spotlight soluble listen to this from yeah I should I should have done that but spotlighting is where you use an artificial light whether it's a handheld Spotlight a flashlight whatever and you go into remote areas and you look to find animals at night because they freeze their really relaxed their eyes glow and then you shoot him that way you kill Emily at night after dark which is never allowed you know it's usually in or out of hunting season because anyone's going to Spotlight a deer nine times out of ten they're not licensed or they're not going to do it during season like we do so they're doing that so in the in

world is game wardens that's the ultimate Wild Life criminal because they're going to kill those you know that have that unborn trophy Buck for good genetics they're going to kill a trophy deer way in the Rut you know that you know needs to go another year or whatever so that's what we focused on that was like if I can cut my teeth and get you know become a reputable game or and I'm going after the hardcores that was the game then so it's 94 and I'm pulling these guys out and call him out on loudspeaker I've got my weapon on him and I'm like oh man there's a lot of guys out there I can't get him to jail I'm calling back up I got Riverside County coming in I mean we even have the the Sheriff's Office helicopter come in several nights once we got to know each other and they realized who is this game warden and what are these Gamers Riverside County going out into just crazy areas by themself they monitor our traffic and they come in on the helicopter and light it up and call him you know call these bad guys out on loudspeakers just to make sure we were okay and feels good when the Cavalry comes on those nice man let me tell you well so inverse sort of situations they just didn't know that you would ever run into someone that's that armed

many guys van or what have you eight people but it's so the reason why your Patron by yourself is because they didn't anticipate anything like this well and we didn't have the bodies right this was one of the things that was crazy we get back to the thin Green Line concept and realize that one game warden is responsible for

200 to 250 square miles give or take whoa and you know how big Riverside county is on the inline 200 square miles maybe more you know depending on what part was damn Warden one game warden so a squad of seven-game orange to put in perspective check this out brother so when I was supervising traditional Patrol before we started the special ops met team in Santa Clara County we always had vacancies because we always low on bodies we couldn't hire game wardens fast enough we weren't funded for to where the case may be so we might have four or five game wardens 47 positions and we had to cover all the Santa Clara County which is everything from the city to all those Foothills and there's a lot of it in Silicon Valley people don't realize

all of San Benito County which is huge Hollister Gilroy right where I'm from in Gilroy that whole area down to the South that is just massive Mountain Country full of Wildlife and then like part of Monterey County and I had five people in myself as Lieutenant I was insane I can't believe that so to go out on a spot lighting Patrol to that point and have a partner with you just one other game warden that's tough you know you're basically pulling a whole nother area you can't work night Hunter so is spotlighting that common it it is still going on in the state and it's going on a lot back then here because there had been so little presence here in Southern California it was off the hook it was crazy one week in 1994 I remember

I was at a really good ride along with me a wildlife biologist is just a Savvy Hunter great eyes he became kind of like my right-hand man Brian and we I said we're going to catch a spotlight her every night this week he was you think so I go it's that crazy let's see if we can do it and so we went and worked all night long started on Monday night how do you catch em do you look for a spotlight like would you get to a vantage point and glass it's yeah it's just like glass in a big Basin for Elk right right you getting a really good OverWatch so you get the most visibility you know hide the truck and you watch and you find areas where it's likely to happen and it takes a while to learn where that's going to be just because you got this huge district and you could have 20 places where guys Spotlight but until you get into the areas a new war and really get to figure it all out you don't know where to be and it's a trial and error but you know it took me six months give or take a just just going out there and Scout hard and seeing where this road goes and how does that canyon look what type of water do I have down there what am I seeing at low light in the evening when animals are coming to water who

I got a whole herd of elk here I got a whole herd of deer got some bucks you know I'm seeing other animals run around this is going to be a hot spot because guys can get to it and if you just put the time in you just kind of lie in wait you know kind of put your little hide together just like hunting big game eventually it starts happening and by 1994 and I've been in District a year down here I pretty much had my spots figured out my partners in other parts of Riverside to so we'd all be out alone so we could cover more area and talking back and forth I mean I'm going to date myself here but cell phones are brand-new so we all have those flip cell phones and we how old are you I'm gonna be 51 in November I'm 52 yeah don't worry about it no doubt yeah so right there you know all that era so when I started I mean it was the flip phone let's start Trek Communicator on call my partner Jerry like all of those where you at their great like where you had to use I'm over here in Thomas Mountain like I'm over here you see anything yet I go I got one light working all right I gotta go and then I'll go so but that's crazy like you're talking about an enormous pieces of land though it's you guys are responsible for ya

I mean for it's hard for people to put into perspective that don't spend any time in the woods right that you would be able to even find these folks in this enormous area yeah yeah it's starts off as a needle in a haystack type thing you know but once you get into it you get fairly good at it but it always is difficult because again just the percentages of catching a guy on the right night that he's going to be out there and then you got the guys that kind of gets a V2 known where the game warden lives driving by us house looking for his patrol truck to see if he's out that night where's the truck parked we start getting into that problem so we always kind of you know kind of maintained as covert as we can you know we're known in the neighborhood and the thing is we live at home we work out of our homes home office were close to our community because if we kept our truck at a field office we have no response time all spread out so we get very community-oriented in community functions and conservation groups and everybody knows us rather it's a big city or a small little town in the mountains so you got guys doing the cat Mouse thing looking for

listen you know making sure hey is this truck there was the out patrolling well maybe I won't go out tonight but but that that era Joe in 1994 was was off the hook I didn't get a spot lighter every night that week but I got six out of seven and one night I had a double so it was crazy wow and season a ton of guns and you know some guys were going to jail some weren't but a lot of wild life was saved that night because they would have they would have done a lot of harm you know most of these guys are they doing this recreationally for fun of the doing it for food like what do they say the the group I was getting into down here it was it was recreational it might have been to sell the meat I couldn't prove that or it was just to go kill stuff you do get people that need me you know that do Spotlight after dark because they need the meat and stuff like that it's still a violation we still deal with it as such but if we ascertain that we're going to be fair about it you know we said okay look you're poaching I know you're starving it's out of season it's in season you have a tag but you just really got to get that meat I mean there are certain cases where you just kind of feel for that person to go I see where the motivation was

you know and a very small percentage of poachers are that way but some of them are just you know they're just trying to feed their family right and there it's a whole different game and we're going to be fair about it or we should be fair but most of them gangbangers or most of them criminals like what is it was are down here average down here 70 80 percent yeah head criminal histories had illegal weapons associated with gangs so it was almost like Recreation for them it almost was like what practice yeah yeah and I remember one case down here that was a pretty crazy one it was it was three guys pretty inebriated pretty liquored up and there's a head-on stop and one of them had a like a $50,000 no-bail warrant for cocaine trafficking out of Mexico and that was in that week that we had you know crazy Spotlight and things going on so it was just the demographic of down here where up north it wounded it wouldn't be necessarily at felon but that guy that just wanted that trophy buck and to get it cheat to get it you know if I could give you a magic wand okay and you

like I could say John it's up to you fix all this how do you do it you have unlimited resources man that's a great question and I'll do go into the bottle the genie right here hmm one we put more gamers in the field because we do need more and we pay them better and here's the rub because there's this perception that game wardens just check fishing licenses or they might not be real cops were paid about 40% less than a county sheriff than a highway patrolman reason a city police guy right and because of you think it's because of perception real a perception of public lack of knowledge perhaps now that is start so as far as funds get allocated they say well game wardens right this is the going rate you know this is what we've always paid you know the raises already percent yeah yeah that's we're in the car we're in a constant constant salary Equity fi we've been we've been you know really pushing that for you know 15 years plus or minus something that really started to legitimize us and in

when my first book came out were in the woods that's when the wild Justice game when reality show on National Geographic Channel aired for the first time and that was our agency and that was the first of what are now a lot of game warden shows and the more the merrier because I've never seen that one yeah Justice yeah it was it's good yeah it was it was it was us you know so I'm partially right but is mostly busting people for wildlife or is it gets to the marijuana stuff to do actually get in the marijuana stuff something the wild justice film Crews really resonated with and a lot of the guys are on the team now myself included ended up being featured like their main people for the better part of like three seasons because we weren't just bringing them the poaching cases the traditional stuff which needed to get shown even the end we didn't have our formalize team yet but I was in bed with Santa Clara County Brian and canine Phoebe were up in Shasta but we were getting brought together for the show and he was starting to work down with me in the Bay Area and bring that Wonder Dog Phoebe into the mix that he had honed you know for years and we started to show this cartel

to stuff through the show and that's what got the ratings that's what you know that was worldwide broadcast a number one hit on that Geo for three years and that open the door you know we needed that exposure and it's the same thing with like writing these books and doing the TV I do it's a fine line between risk and some exposure or getting the message out and like I said we're so thin on the thin Green Line we need all the exposure we can get where Little Agency our funding is limited but we're doing a multitude of jobs even outside of the marijuana stuff so that's started to help and now we're starting to get the recognition of the professionalism and the capabilities we have especially with this Tactical Unit to hopefully help with things like salary and numbers in the magic wand brother is number numbers just numbers that are officers and there are paid well enough to live in the Silicon Valley to live here in oh that's hilarious right no one's paid well enough to live in so I mean million right move it out yeah and that's where that's where I grew up and if I was an embedded there as family member I couldn't have afforded to stay and I had great great wardens come in and do fantastic work that didn't

you Silicon Valley but they're like I can't buy a house here I got to go to Butte County I got to go Shasta County I get my body in the woods a little bit drive an hour to work yeah you know so if it has there been discussion like as anyone who brought this out like a Dan Crenshaw was not aware of this when I discussed it with him when there was talking about federally legalizing marijuana right that it's not just about saying it's okay for kids right but it's about mitigating these problems that you have with cartels because when there is an illegal opportunity to sell something that there's a demand for than the criminals are going to sell it and that's what you have now exactly and it has there been discussion like to someone to bring this up like this is one of the primary problems with having marijuana federally illegal with California having it state legal that there is this massive confusion and this you know diminishing of penalties in California with growing illegally there totally is and you know you got the opposite ends of the spectrum and here's what we're learning with

Elation I've always said this I said look if we're going to regulate and we need to regulate to stop this black market let's do it smart you know let's for one everything we really tried to push here in California was regulate legitimate cannabis the correct way keep people safe test it test it make sure those pesticides the cartel pesticides are absolutely man and as long as people aren't hurting themselves or other people they're not destroying waterways we're not getting in gunfights over it great you know no problem but for like the you know the outdoor trespassing with these cartels let's take that funding and put more effort into stop in that you know let's not water it down to misdemeanors and infractions and do things like that and and you know it's and even if we can even take cannabis out of the equation Joe from the standpoint of I remember a few years ago as quoted by the Associated Press of saying if cherry tomatoes were so desired on the black market and we're illegal and people were paying $4,000 a pound for cherry tomatoes

we haven't gun fights over cherry tomatoes and haven't banned poison some cherry tomatoes that our kids would be in their salads you know because of the black market so you can take you know cannabis even out of the equation and look at the environmental impacts and look at the public safety but we have to do something to regulate this thing uniformly over the across the board and we have to break the black market but what I've seen and I go into the last chapter in my new book hidden were extensively on this is what are the challenges moving forward after seeing regulation in play for two years boots on the ground watching it and having a great relationship with legitimate legitimate cannabis Growers and I'll tell you a few stories that really open my eyes and and got us unified right because the whole thing is we need to be unified on this on this concept not polarized left or right anti cannabis Pro cannabis let's get unified environmental safety Public Safety all of it but because of how we regulated and the licensing fees and the protocol and everything else we've had all of these you know black market

hours in the to 15 days that wanted to get legal and saw everything coming in the cost to do it and being on Big Brother's radar or law enforcement's radar and they backed out like in Humboldt County we had it like I want to stay in the better part of 10 to 50 thousand Growers ready to regulate and we barely got a thousand you know and they went you know I can't afford to go through this permitting process I can't afford the delay so I'm just going to go back on the black market I'm not going to be on the radar wow and that has to stop if we're going to regulate right yeah the thing that was really interesting and I never saw this coming but when when we're about to roll out prop 64 and you know it had been voted for recreational and the medical laws were tightening up I was the first law enforcement guy being from a marijuana enforcement team to to go into these California Grower Association hosted grower meetings and my first one was in Santa Cruz right over the hill from my place right and I mean I'm in the you know the bdus the camo bottoms the polo I'm going into my training attire for met

and the look on 500 crores faces when I walked into that meeting just like what's he doing here conflict of interest he's working us he's a guys watching her license plates and I'm just like guys everybody breathe I'm going to tell you a story I'm going to show you a powerpoint it's going to be graphic I'm not here to work anybody you know I'm here to unify just hear what I have to say no judgment and so I was all these guys aware of how big the situation was before you show them I would have thought so because it there in the industry right they know we'd better than just about anybody but high all the time they're not seeing the cartel is just not paying attention they're just growing pot yeah that's all I didn't see that guy what was that kind of trail camera was it got a backpack like 300 pounds of pipe yeah but anyway I explained that I mean these guys literally would back in hundreds and hundreds of yards of pipe and tubing like for hoses on their back other tough yeah I've got I got photos in the new book on trail cam with felt on their feet covering their tracks

with these see bags a hundred plus pounds and a spool of pipe going up man like I don't know how hard that is to do I mean these guys just took a legit job yeah they'd be like the best employees you never had they would they would been there they're tough and there I mean to look at the environment they live in for six months man yeah they're all Outdoors but I was at this meeting and I gave the presentation I talked about it and it was crazy to see a look of shock on these these grower groups faces I mean some women were in tears some of the guys were just like pissed off and pumping their fists and they're like that's bullshit we are not about that we're not about doing anything bad with our water we like our Wildlife we just want to grow cannabis we want to be regulated you know and it was such a turn around you know from the traditional relationship between law enforcement and the Cannabis world and to be the one guy there with all of the growing Community there and then go from complete horror that I was there as an adversary or judgment or anything

outer you know to do anything negative from an enforcement standpoint to suddenly have a real talks of what was going out and and I could kind of see the authenticity the genuine is on some of their faces the way they reacted to my slides to the videos and so when I left that first meeting I remember I just got flooded at my patrol truck and I had Apollo with me my little lab and she's an icebreaker I thought well could be an interesting meeting I should have the dog for pets you know and she jumped in and I always Growers for coming to my truck and I'm packing up my stuff and lat well this is weird and it was all these you know farmer supervisors from all over the state Mendocino County up in the Emerald Triangle Santa Cruz in there just give me their cards and hey lieutenant I have workers I have resources we will hike in and clean up a grow with you let us help them at Team let us help the Cannabis program whatever we can do and no right no charge and and that was genuine man I was really really taken back by that in a positive way and I realized if we get the legitimate Farmers on our side

and they're aware of this they will help Market that message so they have money and they have money yeah the legitimate Farmers making a lot of money that would be a great way for you know we mean tax-wise if I mean there's extremely high taxes on cannabis as it is right but we could allocate that taxes absolutely to you guys yeah that would be incredible yeah where's the money going let's have a certain percentage of it designated for wardens that's starting to happen to because what's now that we've had a couple of years and we're seeing some of the regulatory funding on the taxes trickle back I'm in contact with my team all the time I still get to see him periodically and train and do things like that and really give them a shout-out for all the amazing you know risk they're taken in the work they're doing and promote their message what they're out there doing but the money starting to come back to us now now we're starting to get equipment we're starting to get more bodies we're starting to get like over time funding so the ridiculous long hours our small Team Works they're compensated for that just just happen literally you know within a

they're two of a being on the show with you so we're seeing some positives from at those rates raised we're trying yeah I mean we're trying alert the Press 40% is discussed this this coffee sausage damn good shot on their Hamilton Hamilton that I'm not even a coffee drinker and I'm loving this stuff it's great stuff we convert now makes your mouth smack dog gives you a little it does a little yeah you know like yeah clear your throat a lot it's a coconut oil and turmeric and all that jazz wealthy Colorado it was the first state to legalize it and Washington State to they have similar problems they still have a black market you know and the thing right now because we're not regulating federally and so every state anything that's grown stays in that state per law right but every all the demand is back east in these non-regulated states right don't grow it so Colorado has you know an interstate Black Market that's done by the you know quasi legitimate Growers as well as the cartel element so there's still that black market thriving Within

you know the black market cannabis industry that isn't cartel public lands we've got different mixes and we've okay so it's a different kind of a problem in Colorado so they don't have as many cartel grows not as many they have some they have some I've I've talked to those guys and worked with them a little bit and they do have some but again they're kind of like where I'm at Montana now tight little growing window you know early winners late thaws so they don't have a very big growing season Outdoors the conditions aren't Prime like they are here in Cali this is a this is a giant issue that is largely undiscussed and it's one of the reasons why I was so fascinated by that podcast is that and this is one more one more piece of the puzzle when you talk about border control right that somehow or another we've gotten into this this state our country this this place in our country where some people want to control the border and some people don't want any borders right and do you have to understand that this is the number one problem with the border the number one problem with the borders

cartel violence cartel violence cartel crime that's the number one problem and the giant percentage of these people that are coming over and doing illegal activity or doing it because it's profitable and the reason why it's profitable is because it's illegal and so they can do these things and sell marijuana right all over this country illegally because it's illegal and if it was legal we could regulate it we could tax it the money could go into schools and pay for guys like you and go to fixing this problem and instead we're playing this little stupid game where you know some states are legal in some states are and you know let's let's you know and it's federally it's still schedule one crime when there's millions of legitimate law-abiding taxpaying citizens that enjoy it and it's crazy it is and into that point you know you look at you know the discrepancy and just the inconsistency on cannabis regulation some states some nod never lie not

but when you to the Border issue you brought up that good point of it's not just that cartel element for this can't this poison cannabis stuff for this toxically tainted cannabis is a better way to phrase it it's the smuggling human trafficking it's all those other crimes that maximum production so I'm not a you know I get asked a lot like after you know you had a great conversation with with Mike Baker on this was you know are open borders going to work and now we got some regulation it's just not going to work well as doesn't the world's not even so that's why I open borders are going to work right if the world was even and there was you know me there's like extreme crime right below us and you know I had Ed called her on on who works for Mexico we just started dialogue and last week I like that guy good guy yeah boy does he scare the shit out of you though when he tells the stories about Mexico about how bad it is down there and there's there's just an insane amount of violence that's going on down there and he's insane amount of crime

and so much of it is connected to the illegal drug trade yeah and look you're not going to kill it all if you make marijuana legal but you would kill a percentage at least it would make it a little bit better and it would stop that yeah and one of the things we get from from getting that regulation if we can stop that black market for you know cartel weed we're going to save a lot of wildlife yes we're going to preserve a lot of waterways right because all those other crimes are very heinous and very destructive and I hate to see the human trafficking and all the math problems and anything that relates to violence or a deterioration of a soul but you know I love the Wildman Woods Irma Church yours too I mean what you do for conservation the elk hunting that you're doing and all those different things I mean it's just it's magical out there and it's just most people just don't even know I don't think no but I mean don't get a chance to experience what it's like to actually be a real woods being the real ways which are which are getting shrinker smaller and smaller and smaller even here in Cali that has so much Beauty but I look at it this way I said look if we lose

all of our open space to a problem like this and it compounds the problem and we lose our wildlife and good water you may not be in the outdoors right now you might be a preservationist you might be you know on your freaking digital device all the time and looking at Wildlife through a for a screen but if you ever do go out and you get that peace and tranquility and you get centered like we do run a trail hike a you know LA County Mountain Trail open space don't even get that far in the woods it's just soothing yeah you know brings us back to our Center and you know if the new generations that aren't getting that from the cities can get that or they get their kids doing it or their grandkids are here about it but it's not there to go do that to me man we're just we're just not paying it forward enough so this is this is something I got to stay on and I really appreciate you and what you stand for because of the message I think just so many people don't know yeah I just think that's a big part of it is they don't know what's interesting to me to is that the allocation of resources that it's so when

have something that's illegal you're not getting any of that money no and if it was legal there's an enormous amount of money that could go to schools and fix the roads and we can allocate it to a bunch of different big-time really positive ways to spend it yeah and we're not doing that and it's the reason why is because it's illegal and this is crime problem is very similar to what they face during prohibition with alcohol you the rise of organized crime I mean that's where they were getting their money from because there was such a demand it's really a disgusting dumb way to approach a problem that is in many people's ideas of social problem that money could go to so many different positive things yeah we're perpetuating it through that reason too many others we're basically you know where basically embedding the problem in our country and Ed said this cauldron we were dialogue in earlier this week and he said you know he's kind of looked at things from the border and South and the issues coming in from the

order from the cartel front he said you know now I'm getting into your book and I'm starting to analyze what your you guys are fighting on the ground inside the borders in California the rest of the country goes it's embedded now I mean it's not like it's just coming across I mean the Enterprise is embedded here in the nation because they have the pipeline they have the distribution they have a market and they don't have to deal with the Border issue and the comfortable because of exactly where we're at and what people are aware of and in California that it's just a misdemeanor which is even more insane yeah it's that's got to change that's got to change you know I mean it did should be something horrendous if you're if you actually have a background in crime right especially particularly violent crime and you get caught doing something like that I mean it should be severe severe penalty it should absolutely be severe now that the Saving Grace of that is when we get the environmental crimes that we bring from the fish and wildlife standpoint to those charges for these guys we get it back to felony status because we had an interesting thing happen as soon as all that regulation started two years ago

and the what the you know those trespass grow crimes were watered down to what we're talking about District Attorney's all throughout the state said oh man we're not going to be able to prosecute these crimes I mean we're not going to have you know we're not going to have a jury that sympathetic to these issues it's not worth it some Sheriff's departments were saying hey we know how violent these guys are we know your team's been in like six gunfights man your partner was almost killed and 05 in the first one you guys take these guys head on you know you want to protect your Wildlife whatever but they're not stopping and it's a misdemeanor and we can't convict them so we're not going to play so the backlash of those crimes being watered down Joe was team stopped working it except us and like the feds you know and not only that DA's could prosecute so I remember speaking for the California District Attorneys Association on this and saying guys there's a solution everybody no matter where they sit on the Cannabis Spectrum everybody hates to see Bambi dead water poisoned everyone has a little bit of

environmental passion and I'm on both sides of the fence and that's where I say here we get to the you we can unify and not worry about where we sit on the performer against and if you take these water code enhancements if you take the felony in the penal code from the band toxic carbo fear in if you take a streambed alteration diversion or dead Wildlife or littering close to a state Waterway you stack all those up you get all these penalties and you can convict on that you know even in a sympathetic jury on see a cannabis issue so we started to prosecute these cases and they started to come back and it's an arduous enter

on it's more work than we should have to do but we're doing it now when they find these cartel members and they bus them and they do prosecute them for these felonies what happens do they they don't get deported right the stay in this country and it is jail here it depends they'll go to jail here if it's a sanctuary type States scenario and they're going to you know stay in our justice system and they will do jail time here if we're working with ice and our feds and Homeland Security especially ice agents and they are classified as a deportable felon they will get deported again for watching imported did they get deported to jail or dig it do they just get freed well they're supposed to go back and be in custody over on that side does that always happen air quotes supposed to supposed to operative word suppose specially if there's someone who's high up in the cartel or is making a good amount of money for the cartel right it's highly likely that with a lot of corruption they might go free very very true and the case has happened where we've you know got some of these cartel Growers deported and

a week later they're in a different growing in Northern California we've had some situations where we've seen the same guy really for 20 times what no joke so you've busted them how many times we did or another team did or sort of interested 20 times yeah they've been they've been and they're still here and they're still here holy shit because of what you've just broken system yes the checked right and what you just said it's like because of because of the money involved and we know and I go into this and hit more a little bit what I can talk about under you know just what we learned without putting names out there is it's four to seven thousand dollars for these grow organizations in these cartels cells to bring their best Growers back across and it's a drop in the bucket and they don't even consider the Border a border they consider it like a speed bump on the 405 freeway so how do they get guys in do they use boats do they use tunnels all of it all of it boats I was always thinking like how the fuck you going to protect the Border when you just get a boat and just kind of like well pass and pulling somewhere in California

pop out yeah well something something we learned recently and it's been about the last five years and it was really starting to hit the California coastline and the Oregon Coastline heavy when we started our unit in 2013 was these panga boats and you know they start weren't penge it's called panga Pa Ang a called a panga boat and there are there you know the the inside the Mazatlán Peninsula and they're loaded up with 6,000 pounds of Tainted weed but grown in Mexico same stuff they're doing here with the same toxics or meth or people or both and a couple of Growers are you know Transporters in the run this boat it's a one-way boat and it's is lot of money in it you know there's big four-stroke Motors it's painted kind of the color of the ocean so it's hard to pick up from the air goes kind of fast it's made to carry big loads and they'll take that thing around the peninsula they'll fuel up offshore somewhere off the San Diego coast line maybe a hundred miles an hour he's got one there it is nice Jamie well as a lot of weed that's a lot yeah I got some pretty cool pictures in the book so these guys just pulled the boat in

and then this is obviously one that got busted and then they just have someone waiting for them an example that stuff in the trucks and I got a distribution Network ready to go and then that boats just disposed of and again ladies and gentlemen this is all because of an illegal demand because it's illegal this stuff wouldn't be profitable if we were growing it here in the United States and if the only way you would sell it at a store was if it was regulated and licensed and you knew that it was tested and it was all grown here get a certificate of where the farmer was and if that element out of it yeah so you take that element completely out of it and they would but you know obviously they're still selling Fentanyl and all sorts of other shit that we don't want legal yeah but it's so dark it's such a confusing confusing it was us

bang a boat found with 18 million dollars worth of weed that is a lot of weeds as weed is not expensive how is a boat got 18 million dollars worth of weed that's a heavy load that's a typical load to Joe and that was probably one of the monetary boats we helped on because we interdict a lot there but yeah it's a daunting task when you look at that dude on the right I said just shoot him it is face fabric that looks super degree angry yeah very mad very madri be so happy yeah I mean obviously I'm not I'm kidding about shoot him but it is their situation is just as Grave I mean you live in Mexico and you're fucked and there's no way for you to get by legally and you're a young man you get recruited into one of these cartels and next thing you know you've been in for 10 years and you committed a few murders and you're involved in you drug traffic and you love the silver yeah you're down that slope I'm done how do you get out of that you really don't there's no there's no avenues for them there's no established you know community outreach centers like hey

all members like why don't you just grow cherry tomatoes instead bright or you know there's no positive reinforcement people to give a shit you know it's horrible yeah I mean and a lot of that again is backed by illegal drug sales if you don't have a legal drug sales you don't have nearly as much profit or incentive and you have less of that yeah it sounds counter intuitive for people to make things illegal that are legal are make things legal that are illegal and you would you would stop the crime but that is really how it works it is and I always look at it this way I said look regardless of where you sit on the emotional Spectrum on this yeah against cannabis for cannabis let's all look at the issue of environmental Purity safety in America and really be realists of what's going to help the problem and you hit it on the head when you said well yeah there's all that messed up going on in this that and there is but I'm a realist and we got to do something right now yeah and I think if we're going to figure Lee federally regulated to any type of consistency we're still many years off from that you know so what are we going to do

meantime if that's going to happen we still got to deal with this this grow mess going on in predominantly California and all this stuff getting out to our public and being tainted we still have to deal with the meth issue and the gun-running and all of that and and knowing that it's embedded in our country we need to have people aware of it and what not only law enforcement but bring bring that thin Green Line a little bigger with conservationist like yourself and people that are in the know people that are in the outdoors and just put in the word out I mean it's crazy that 10 years have passed since the first book in 10 years have passed since we did those you know those three good years while Justice TV but in that interim it's been a specialty of ours we built a team that's you know notice now for being pretty you know pretty Innovative and Progressive and and non-traditional but putting up some pretty good numbers when it comes to the environmental damage in the public safety issue and how much we took out and bad guys we caught and what are what are what canines did especially canine Phoebe but we're only drop in the bucket yeah you know it's one team

out of part of the state and other teams are doing some stuff to at the federal level and state level and we're only getting maybe 50% of this stuff if we're lucky is it really that much it's 50% hi that's that's optimistic yeah now again the magic wand yep I give you the magic wand John do whatever you want how would you how many more officers would you hire how big would you make the task force I had much would you Branch out your operation I'd make the Tactical Unit the Met team of the tacticians going just after the cartel front that we formed I you know triple or quadruple it you know have a team like maybe four teams in the state you know have them all trained together have them all uniformly committed to tactics and training because it is it is quite Advanced with some of our guys have doing from a sniper team to tracking to you know all the stuff we get into not only for this job but for anything else we come up with right from a from a from an American Public Safety threat after 9/11 stuff changed and we hadn't gotten to this grow mess yet Joe you know with

to the level of the cartel front but I knew back then you know game wardens are going to have to be tactically trained as well as any other law enforcement officer and we're going to have to have our own tactical Unix we're doing some pretty crazy stuff for wildlife crimes you know and then Homeland Security on a potential terrorist threat you need to have tactical units that are there with every other agency and Military teams because we're all thin and numbers and if something big goes down I need to know that the sniper team we built with Matt and these tacticians can go in and integrate with San Jose PD SWAT they can integrate with military personnel you know wherever same type of deal and we've used we've gone the same direction with some of that good training and found the right people to do that just under game or an umbrella because it's gotten that crazy so it is crazy that you guys were required to do that I mean it's sort of like asking a teacher to also be a kick box or something right like right like the idea that you guys are supposed to be doing one thing yeah which is the game warden and then all the sudden you're involved in Narcotics trafficking and

tell operations and getting shot at and you bring in dogs and yeah you're dealt these dogs that you're training no Phoebe was there was very interesting listening to How effective it using Belgium Alma's that were using yeah primarily our main dogs a Belgian male and you are powerful dog's mouth they are amazed are so smart yeah you look in their eyes they like you can see it right there like hey man how you doing yeah they're not like looking at a poodle no they're not like looking at our labs they look fuller right through you that's sweet little face and now those dogs out yeah the thing that's cool about these dogs and and I can't talk enough about it man because no matter where you sit everybody loves a good dog story and you know some people say well dual-purpose you gotta bite guys what's with that is it you know really aggressive and when you look at it's a lifesaver for everybody it's a lifesaver for us it's a lifesaver for the suspect to because it usually involves a potential gunfight that the dog basically you know alleviated because she or he was there so we got

K9 program in agency going kind of full speed around two thousand eight ish we have three we have three levels of canine we have like the companion right along canine that kind of does everything with you she's never going to bite anybody and that's Apollo that's like my lab right and then we have the detection level dog and most of those are Labradors like Marshall like Apollo because Labs have such amazing noses they really can hold on sent you know they can trained to detect many cents and we certify them in different things and then there's the Phoebe's you know the Belgian Mal's or the Shepherds and really it's become mostly males now in our agency and why Mao's were shepherds um they'd just do better in the heat you know shepherds are longer hair dry and we're in hundred degree weather we're on Long hikes you know or unsupported those dogs might have to sit quietly after hiking eight miles and sit in a prone quietly while we're watching and observing and stocking it on suspects to make an apprehension and arrest safely and hopefully avoid a gunfight so and we've also found with the with the male's they

said they just hold up better on average and there's certainly exceptions to that but when we got our Dual Purpose program back on track these are dogs that will bite when they need to on command but they have great noses so we'll still detect wonderfully you know Finding evidence finding tainted weed whatever the case may be a firearm a bear gall bladder all of that but they'll also you know like Phoebe was nicknamed the fur missile because when it was time for her to go to work and some guy was going to pull a weapon on us she was all business the cool thing about a dog like her and and Mike ritland I got into this on his show especially and he was blown away he said I've never heard of a dog in a domestic law enforcement team that's had like she had a hundred sixteen apprehension bites in her career and she had hundred and sixteen no joke Joe so there's a hundred sixteen cartel guys out there telling stories about this dog yeah they're saying no more pair of I've been bit too many times now but the cool thing about that was a standpoint of life she saved

and she also arrested another eight to nine hundred that she didn't have to buy it in her career that's a lot how many have you guys arrested when I retired we were over a thousand wow and in five and a half years yeah and we and against all these all grow-ops all grow-ups yeah these are all grown-ups are related to grow up so the natural guys are armed I'll guys have knives or guns you know that you're not getting bit unless you know you're a deadly force threat on some level or a significant threat so yeah it's been a lot of guys so that number that you're talking about 10,000 that really is conservative but I think it's very much so yeah that is so insane because if you fly over like Humboldt or any of these areas like a particularly meta see no Northern California the density of the forest and the the public land out there yeah there's a lot of land there's a lot of land and a lot of Opera you know potential we're not seeing so and that's still still thriving so when you you know when you look at

is a canine and you go well let's see she was in the field doing these type operations for about seven or eight years and yeah that's great from a record standpoint and numbers and the life she saved but it gives you a like a like a snapshot of the issue how many guys did we not catch that we're out there arm right that we weren't involved in you know we weren't involved so and the dogs have just saved lives man they have saved Phoebe I go into this in the new book especially in 2012 but right before our team started Phoebe saved my life Brian's life and all these other operators in Santa Clara County and Silicon Valley right where I grew up because she engaged a guy that was pulling a Russian automatic pistol on me and I was the support for the for Brian I was basically as K-9 Handler or support guy and Brian had to deal with this other Growers partner that had a big Taurus Judge revolver on his hip and he was pulling it so he goes for that guy and says John just take my dog and Phoebe's on the bite he's biting this guy in the calf and you know this guy's nose down and we don't know he's got this weapon and I start to see it coming

out and I get on him and I do what I need to do with some physical control and Strikes and whatnot to get the gun out of his hand but had she not been on that guy on a bike show that guns turned on me at 5 feet I'm engaged all the rathman behind me I'm you know I'm in a gunfight again we've been in too many of those already how many gunfights you been our team's been in six and I've been on the ground for four out of the six that are guys have been involved in and they've all been around this particular problem we had a lot less once the team got formalized and so we started using dogs but we still had to during the window of the team being operational that we could avoid and dogs played a big part in that as I go into a mini stories so crate I mean when I was listening to that podcast with Steve rinella the mediator podcast with you and I was like I can't believe that there is not some sort of another division of law enforcement that gets involved in this and that we were requiring game wardens to essentially become something completely different yeah well we still have other law enforcement agencies involved for

service dedicates a lot of people to it because a lot of this is on Federal Land so we work at hand in hand some Sheriff's Department still work it BLM works at

but very few agencies have a dedicated team within their unit just for this problem and it was a big step for us and even though it's not a traditional thing like we like we kind of talked about when we started all of us that are doing it want to do it I mean we really everything we do like I said is important whenever negate anything a wildlife officer game weren't has to do but for us that's see this problem is the most severe which we all acknowledge and you know we're those kind of team members that have the military the law enforcement tactical experience we're just wired for this type of stuff and we know I feel like you know in 28 years of being a game warden it felt like a 10-year career and even though we're certainly underpay like I mentioned I had a dream job you know it was really awesome to you know because you're really doing a difference I think we're making a difference exactly I think every case we make matters and even though it's an uphill battle and with a whole regulation debate and stuff every grow site we interdict and stop and take that you know tainted cannabis out of the market or restore that Waterway and clean up that gross

it and we clean them all up now that we go into and the other agencies now support us and clean up with their own resources because game wardens have got so legitimate in working with other agencies that are non conservation groups Sheriff's Department's right DEA task force type units in there like okay we agree we see we see the value in Reclamation clean up these grows to the point where Obama's drugs are addressed a lot of us when my team was starting up in our group is working heavy and it was a real compliment but finally more importantly got the news out where he said I want this model rewarded what fish and wildlife is doing with this cleanup I mean you guys are arresting guys that's great you're taking guns away your kit you know obviously somebody's going to be saved because these guys are violent deadly and your Raticate in the plants it's fantastic keep it out of the market they're poisoned but unless you're doing that Reclamation component I know it's dirty and arduous and tiring and it takes resources you know we're not do or not making the biggest dense so then

funding started to reflect from the federal level through da funding rewards for Reclamation and that was like one of these men it took it literally took 13 12 13 years to get there so when you guys have a situation like the first one you found in 2004 and you stumble upon this Dry Creek and there's all this debris and as toxic chemicals like what kind of a cleanup or is involved here and how long does something like that take before you can bring that Creek back to where those steelhead can run and to the way it's supposed to be we're looking on an average one full day and we're looking at having to have a helicopter for a whole day and having to have anywhere between you know ideally 12 to maybe more officers in there and a lot of it will have some volunteer groups coming in we have a program in California Fish and Wildlife called the in our VP program the natural resource volunteer program and when we started our pilot program in 2013 we did an operation called pristine to test this theory if we could have this full-time team being effective and if it wasn't for like 40 of these

tears that are helicopter trained to go in with us and do the cleanup we would directly mated you know less than half of what we were able to do but when we do a Reclamation it's probably more expensive than doing the Tactical operation planning in the takedown for the first part of the phase because you know helicopters are thousands of dollars an hour and blade time and you're bagging up trash you're getting dirty some of these water lines like you saw in the spools and I told Stephen on his show and Mike on his show as well with meat eater and Mike drop that you know we tracked a water line was three miles once that was a lot of freakin pipe it went I mean the water sources in Merced County on the Pacheco Pass highway in my old home district and it went all the way down Pacheco pass on to this private Ranch where the gross started and it was I think it's like two point eight five miles hand-laid hand-laid and buried under like you know Forest roads or Fire Road you'd see on like a like a tone Ranch yeah 18 inches underground big wow across the road so even if you had to ditch for three miles that's a lot of work

it's a lot of work those guys are fucking up they should do a real job they would make a lot of money change it fix it do something different yeah all right but the the point of it was we have to we have to pick up all that pipe yes you know so how long is it going to take you know two of my guys Andre miles of pipe 18 inches of ground yeah that river that was a couple days you know on an average one we're going to go a quarter to half a mile at least and you know even though that black pipe isn't poisoning the water directly once all the poisons are taken out that water line is an infrastructure piece that it's their black gold I kind of use the term Black Gold when I start teaching to this that if you leave out water diversion in place and you take out their whole grow site you know you take out their camp and all that but all they got to do is reconnect the water line and put a tent up and bring in seeds and get their little camouflage system going very small investment to put a grow back there and one of the things that really got other agencies convinced that we need to Reclamation to the way we sold it is not only on an Environmental Protection standpoint because other agencies

about the environment but it's not a mandate they're not funded for it but it was something like it's also deterrence because when we debrief some of these guys we caught these upper levels and I dive into this in the new book especially I finally got to ask the questions to these upper-level you know cartel guys run and grows running math run at all and I said you know it's interesting we notice that when you got when we eradicate a grow site traditionally back before we change this process and we just take out the plants and we leave we notice there's a grill like they're back there next year or maybe two seasons again and it's the same group and the answer I got was well we know how taxed you guys are and how much resources you expand and you can't possibly get all of our grows so will try it you know and 50% of the time even though it was rated like two years before and it's on your radar will actually get away with a harvest and I asked well if we start doing this Reclamation and we take all your stuff

restore the Waterway and move the tents and just completely sanitized the site little natural growth come back preserve the creek he said we're not going to come back to that too much effort we're going to bring tens of thousands of dollars in new infrastructure we're going to run a whole nother water line it's already on your radar you know from a couple of years ago when you guys rated it that's not a good business investment in a business model for us to take that chance and we kind of knew that because we were seeing the trend on the ground but to hear it from this guy's mouth mmm and validate what we suspected and have it come back as true and all the other things I got to learn I mean just it change a game for us and that happens I'm going to say about a year to a year and a half right before we started our unit so we went in building the mat team in 2013 with this mindset in place and Nate Arnold who's a district a captain at the time my partner in building this and I'm going to give a shout out right now to my carry-on who is our chief of the law enforcement Division and one of my mentors and Friends way back to in the academy in 92

he greenlit us to test this program and take all of us out a patrol in an already depleted Force so you can imagine there was some resistance there are some middle management and executive staff is like why are we doing this we're not supposed to be doing marijuana work it's drugs when you clean it up grow sides chasing bad guys and Mike said no I believe in you guys test it document it and see what we got to do with this and we were six weeks into a three-month test program and he is the chief and all the deputy Chiefs had talked about what we were doing out there and we were now documenting these insane numbers of what was happening and he said we're done I want it full time by January 1st 2014 get your testing do your interviews get the protocol you guys are leaving Patrol you know we're going to have this many spots and you're going to work straight for headquarters straight line kind of like a military special special ops team that just works for the top they don't really have boundaries of where they go you know and that's kind of the approach we need and we need to do a global Statewide approach with no you know hang

to work with whoever we needed to within without of our agencies and educate and it was really successful and we but we had to break tradition so to your point we like what we do because you said it best we're making a difference every little grow we get out of circulation makes a difference but it is it's an uphill battle because we know we're not getting them all and we know it's not going away anytime soon it must have been very interesting to talk to the cartel members and have them say to you that they know that you guys are taxed oh yeah yeah like shit yeah like they know they know they know your operation they know like how do they know they just they look at the number and and I mean we get so little information because you hold my guys for

when you like you're talking to them how many days do you get with them we got an interview just go on this was one with DEA and a bunch of other officials and multiple interpreters and I get to sit in on it and it was something that bring Phoebe fev wasn't there on that one but I do have a good Phoebe story for it many of them actually but a but a good one and it was it from that one where she saved that another gunfight from happening but but the thing about it was we don't get to talk in very often when we do it's very rare that they'll talk they're put together in an organization where they we don't really know last names they only report to one person a lot of times they don't know who they're working next to so it's compartmentalised very compartmentalized and they do this to make sure the people cannot go back exactly cannot talk cannot reveal very much information I know a first name of my boss who's my supplier so this was someone that was taken on other cartel crimes at high level but not a violent guy you know he was a very candid and straightforward he's responsible for a lot of stuff in California and I can say that much

in other parts of the country but what he revealed was just validating what we knew but it gave us tools to progress and learn from that yes I was gonna say when they when you do get that information from him did that allowed you to get more resources or to like confirm like hey look this is what we know we need to pull out all this infrastructure we need to pull out these pipes if we don't they're going to come back this is this is going to make a difference it did and when we when we formed with the new team we said here's how we're going to approach this we're going to we're going to help agencies are going to do our own missions we're going to help other agencies that are doing the work but we're going to do it under the caveat that we're going to do a three-prong approach we're going to apprehend as diligently as we can and catch these guys through our dogs through our tactics because you know just chasing them around and knowing they're going to get away there's no deterrence in that and yeah it's risky and yeah it's dangerous but at least I know if I take them into custody even for a day five days whatever maybe they're deported maybe they're not that's one really skilled guide you in a lot of environmental damage

that's at least out of circulation for a while yeah right so that had to happen we're going to eradicate every tainted plant and 90% of these grows there all tainted with this carbo fear and so they have any percent 90 percent it started 10 years ago is about 1 out of 2 and by the time those stats were trickling at the end of 2018 and I was compiling for the team I'm like oh my gosh man we had car both Iran and like 89 or 90 percent of every grow site we went into wow on these trespass grows but then the third thing we had to do and we would only want to work with agencies that agreed is

Reclamation hmm it's going to be dirty guys we might have to come back a different day but give us your helicopter team give us some bodies yeah and it's but there's no specific Reclamation like group like it's like it seems like they should have an agency that does this we don't have that in place yet and this original Creek that you guys had in 2004 did you guys read divert the water we did and so it's all the we actually kill that are flowing again yeah I took two years to get the fish back we held that one and that was literally what numbers of fish do you guys think you lost in that oh man I mean the steel header federally listed right now and they're valued at like 20 to $30,000 a fish yeah there's a threat so catch and release of that I wanted to ask you as a game warden you know I'm not a fan yeah of catching really don't like the Catch and Release well it's weird like I like fishing for food right I mean it's like I don't want to shoot a deer with a blow dart either and just go look I got one huh right and then let them like wake up Jesus and get out of there

no I'm getting it for food yeah I mean look I know steelhead fishing is fun I know it is it looks looks awesome I've never caught steelhead but I've got salmon of course trout their amazing sure there was gorgeous fish but catching them under shoving a hook in their head and then let them go just seems stupid it's not yet it's counterintuitive you don't you don't eat them at all if you don't need still had it all well if they're listed in there so threatened the way to keep steelhead fishing going right like in California is okay guys you can catch him but you got to release that's so stupid you know so it would now what about Oregon and Pacific Northwest they do they keep them there in some places they do is this good eating fish yeah yeah it's a rainbow trout right yeah derivative or but it's but it's spawning is coming from the ocean it's going upriver it's spawning going back to the ocean so that's what makes this Steelhead and it's an awesome fish in This Magnificent fight like crazy and it's just they do not able to change natural they're tough yeah and you just look at the you look at how sensitive

our and in that one Creek in the 2004 grow that was the worst scenario that could have happened right that they hit the headwaters of the start of this spawning channel that went to a creek called Coyote Creek that actually went all the way into San Jose to the South Bay of the ocean so that pollution situation from those band poisons was just decimating you know three to five miles of creaks so we had to take that Waterway diversion out we had to clean it all up how do you clean it up netted up bag all the trash pull all the water lines you know what about the pesticides how do you clean that up if it's if it's banned we got to basically get a HazMat team to pull it out you know we got to put it in hazardous material buckets cap it real carefully you know and then and then just get it out safely what about the stuff that gets into the ground you got to move remove the soil you have to go through it and we can always do that and something that's interesting and we get into this especially in book two is there's a group called iarc at a UC Davis dr. Murad Gabriel and his colleagues and they're going in as an NGO

they're the scientists that really validated the devastation these band poisons do when the Pacific Fisher that was almost completely wiped out as a threatened species in California was linked to dto grow poisons and in that kind of came to surface about five or six years ago and then the kind of a light bulb went off that hey this is an outside scientific group of an NGO non-governmental organization that's working hand-in-hand with California Department of Fish and Wildlife and u.s. forest service but they're showing the devastation of this stuff in the soil and in the water will after the Groves eradicated it's not just you know in and around the plants right what's going on so some of these sites if you don't do a complete you know soil overhaul and you know get all that lining out of the Creeks it's not going to be completely a completely restored and sometimes that can take you know we might have the resources get back in there for a year or half of your we always try to get it before the end of the year when the rains come but it's not always possible it just can't it can't happen and you were saying that these pesticides dissipate off the plant

what appears of time does that the case with groundwater and in the ground as well they dissipate toxicity somewhat everywhere but they don't dissipate to the point where they're not harmful on some level so is a case in point I have a slide I show him my power point that actually came from iarc and we've seen this multiple times of you know you have a scientist and he's in the big rubber nitrile gloves the long-sleeve the face protection the hat and he's got a gray fox carcass that right next to a plant in the soil that he ingested this stuff right on a tainted plant and the fox died within minutes and then there's a golden eagle that comes in after and it could have been days after we don't know you know and their carry-on feeders right so the golden eagle lands starts just pick and just on the surface on the body of this doesn't even get into the carcass and here's a dead Golden Eagle in the photo right next to the it's like man just put a radioactive time bomb in that animal I mean that's a lot carcass and that was days after you know

scientists are coming back in So dissipated or not it has its effects we see that in California with rat poison yes an eagle or any not Eagles towels as well write very much so yeah that's why getting all those toxics even the ones that are legal out of areas were Al's or any type of Raptors or you know carrion feeder I know people who don't like coyotes but boy that's the best way to keep those rodents things under control is coyotes it's a balance yeah it really is part of the cycle I mean I know people love their little dogs and cats and stuff but you know I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about it I was likely you need those things man those coyotes are important as gross as they are little criminals will criminalize the neighborhood little criminals in the neighborhood but man you hit it that you got to have that balance yeah you know and and and and like we all say on the conservation model

everything needs a little bit of hunting control yeah you know it does the coyotes need it when they're overpopulated you know you know you say it many times in the message with your guests people need to understand that we're helping Wildlife as Hunters as conservationists we're helping keep what we have and there's no way we cannot manage them because we've already developed so much and taking so much wild space right and we've encroached and we've had you know a population of mountain lions it's ebbed and flowed and climbed and we've had this and we've had that so yeah we have to be involved but this particular problem that we're facing has so many far-reaching effects that we don't even see you know as a hundreds just disgusting well as it's so counterintuitive to people that maybe Anna my rights activists or vegans that Hunters are responsible for the reason why we have such large populations of these animals and Wildlife protection and how much money comes from hunting tags and then recreational firearm sales that's really the majority of the money

goes to preserve these wild lands and keep these animals alive and when you tell that to animal rights people are vegans they Panic right he's like listen the reason why these animals exist the reason why they're protected it's because people hunt them exact sound so counterintuitive but you know you were talking about Rocky Mountain elk Rocky Mountain elk Federation has done an amazing job of amazing re repopulating areas like now they have successful populations in places like Kentucky where they were eradicated at one point in time they had been extirpated and because of it not because of us because of Market hunting back in the turn of the century right the 1800s yeah when people you know needed food and they didn't have refrigerators so you would shoot something and it was only good for a few days and they would go out and shoot some more and they would sell that food and that food was these wild animals and there was completely unregulated hunting yeah just hammered him yeah it's hard it's horrific I mean we know about it with the Buffalo because we've all seen those

terrific photographs of this mounds of skulls and yeah but I mean that was the case with Antelope and deer and they've done such an amazing job that now there's more dear in this country than there were when Columbus was here yeah it is how he was never here it's interesting when you bring up elq because of you know being a worldwide Hunter myself and doing it for so long I've never taken an elk myself but I've been on these amazing elk hunts where I've guided you know people really deserving of getting their first L because an example and you like this story being a fellow you know an elk guy we had a tag in Santa Clara County that was for one bull for a Tule elk and one thing we have in this state especially as we have some of the best Tule elk on the planet yeah they're beautiful you know smaller species and you know great just just a beautiful animal and I saw this tag pop up you know for residents or non-residents and was only one tag but nobody would put in for it because all our Tule elk are on private land and no one has access

so this this gentleman true the stoolie alt tag Mike if is only one tag we give one tag why just because limited numbers we know it's going to be a private land small herd we don't want to take too many bowls and we also know that it accesses going to be hard so they say the experiment with one tag and this gentleman that Drew the tag was a 70 year old master hunter education instructor one of our top instructors for like 40 years so he's teaching Hunter Ed like we do in the Lord in front he's paying it forward draws this tag he had drawn it in a similar County in Alameda County the year before and could never get to any access to harvest as elk so I get a call through the hunter education program like hey man I know you know your ranchers and friends there in Santa Clara County do you have a ranch that we could set them up on I said I'll work something out this guy's awesome I mean how many future conservationists is he raised up so I found him a spot you know a Rancher me and my sister and family grew up with and it a little little cattle ranch but he had a beautiful ha

you need a good her like 40 animals and some nice bowls a couple monsters so we got him set up to harvest one of those bowls you know before you was too old to do it with this tag and we had four generations there Joe is great we had Mike his son his grandson and his great-grandson oh wow and I just have never seen that and then I'm helping you know guide him with the ranch owner and what we thought was the bull we've been watching for months you know in all our scouting was going to be a fairly you know not a super difficult hunt turned out to be an all-day Affair of course typical hunt right Murphy's lot kicked in he was hiding on another part of the ranch and of the day gets this bull and just as magnificent feeling you know he had worked hard You Paid It Forward and in the whole hunting world through Hunter education and we did an article in photos where we saw four generations with this beautiful Tule elk in art and a hunter education magazine and I have that picture you know to this day I just look at it at home and this is what it's about this is awesome then the following year we got that same tag

and the 17 year old daughter of a San Jose police detective friend of mine drew it and she had been hunting with her dad deer Antelope doing her thing learning to hand load like like dad taught her doing it all and she never shot a nail kit and so we did the same thing I took her and her dad and you know we had a in fact one of my buddies from the Santa Clara met team Hunter you'll read about him in book two he's a big hunter as well in an elk guy so he was in that Circle so we all did it as a big kind of Family Affair saying things you're before what should have been a fairly you know a couple hours hon turn out to be an all-day Affair and we end up getting her a nice nice 5x6 bull at the end of the evening I mean it was excellent you know it's incredible oh it's the best ever people don't know yes it's we're lucky it's not commercially available folks lean healthy best yeah delicious yeah but see and people like that you know Harvest an animal they never have access to it's just amazing and then unfortunately that tag got got eliminated in our department and I've been pushing with our Wildlife Management side you bring that

tag back man give give people a chance show that we can still do some cool hunting of a magnificent you know elk species here in California because it's here they're just cool yeah I mean hunting in California is so unusual to begin with right because we have these big population centers like San Francisco and Los Angeles and most people don't hunt there's less than I think it's below 1% now for the entire kit is isolation we're becoming a non-consumptive state when it comes to conservation to the point where our agency is having to deal with more input and impacts from non-consumptive users of the outdoors and that's sad to see yeah it's one of the reasons why I love California and I'm here all the time doing business but I'm a Montana resident now you know the Wide Open Spaces the mindset gorgeous other the conservation you know kind of mindset and no ding here it's just it's a difficult to a different vibe you know that's well it's Hunter friendly exactly Very Much Hunter encouraged yeah

the Oddball if you're if you're right well it's people it's part of the tradition it's people's way of life up there for so long yeah that it's not unusual and then the population numbers are low and there's so much rural area it just becomes and you know you could I mean I was there just two summers ago with my family and we spotted a hundred heard a hundred strong herd of elk that's magnificent pulled over luckily I had my nose in the car I have the kids looking out the window screaming and freaking out they couldn't believe it because if you never seen you know we see a deer occasionally in California neighborhood will see a deer let's see a hundred LLC a hundred in that country and just gorgeous Green Grass and these animals just hanging out there and you know it was in the summer so none of them even had their antlers or just chilling it's incredible pretty wild it's incredible and it's funny you mentioned your kids because I I see it with the nieces and nephews you know and all the all the youth I educate in Hunter Ed and just to see that go to Grizzly Island and see a Tule elk yeah first time or anything they're just like what is that yeah I don't know what that animal is

dear giant dear did I see that some animations Pixar movie is that real well when you see one in real life and you see one scream that's that's that was to me I was home and the first time I went out hunting my friend campaigns took me to Colorado and that thing was screaming it was just we were pretty close it mean like within 15 20 yards like that is insane that that animal can make that noise I just got a bugle it for contact distance felt his breath that's yeah doesn't get any better than that but it's just such a magnificent creature yeah what kind of an impact has your book and your books have that has it had on policy and a People recognize that this is a big issue and of hopefully change you know it's been positive we were we were you know hopeful that we'd hit get a big reach especially with book to and being retired I can speak a little more freely and you know go more National I mean obviously when I was working agency you got to be careful what you say and everything's are very very

stringently looked at but it's been really good because it hasn't just played to you know the audience I normally work with conservation and tactics law enforcement and hunters and outdoorsmen and women it's the Cannabis Community is really buying this book I mean they're promoting it you know they're you know she's flashing on their Instagram page I mean the Northern California Growers actually look at the med team they had a term that that a couple grower colleagues kind of coined about two years ago and they said you guys are Earth Warriors this is amazing I like it and I went well you know special ops law enforcement team called Earth Warriors in California and I went it's accurate that's badass it is very accurate and and it just shows you that you know you're not this rigid tactically oriented stereotypical cop right you know we're out here for a while I've waterways and something that I'm doing with hidden War especially in book two is I look at it as three prong you know

first thing I got to do is protect everybody I can you know and I can do a lot more by talking and being on venues with you on stuff like this then I can push in a rifle anymore or pushing the team I can do more for the team or for the agency by Outreach that they can't necessarily do so that's that's a blessing and that's awesome and then the first besides protecting I want to inform you know I want to be able to tell the story I mean I've been doing this for ten plus years and I never get tired of it I do a presentation we you and I talk about it I get the chills I get fired up I feel it doesn't matter who I'm talking to I could talk to 10 people or you know I've been in groups of thousands it's the same I get fired up I can't am lucky to be able to tell the message given what we've learned I feel like it has a it has an impact so so yeah we are we are getting the reach out there much further quicker right now has it changed policy maybe you know it's a little too early to tell I think it's going to have some effect from the standpoint of when we start to see the non-consumptive users

as enraged from on the issue as well you know equal to or you know mimicking what you and I as conservationists or you know people that are consumptive users that's the third part of my Approach is protect informed than unify I think we need a documentary we got something like that coming up do you really we got something like that it went up and I can't act like that that changes things for people positive or negative even when they're an inaccurate you hear all sorts of Rumblings about things after a good influential documentary comes out yeah we're actually it's cool you brought that up because I'm co-producing with a very good independent filmmaker named Lou Doros a film called altered state and this one's been in the works for about a year and it's it's actually going to be going to be Network and distributed through a new it's called Planet cannabis Entertainment Network and there are new channel Planet cannabis Entertainment Network they got 40 million viewers they're doing main content like other

are but they're also doing some you know some funded independent projects and this is one of them and the nice thing is the reason we're going to do with them is there's no content control you know issues we're going to get to tell an objective story not biased we're going to tell you know we're going to be embedded with legitimate Growers that we the worked effectively with all on the environmental issue what are the environmental impacts what's working what's not working with regulation now what do we need to do to regulation to fix it or embedded with law enforcement teams again doing the work you know I've done with the team and telling their story and we're in production currently so this is this is going to be a cool process and I'm going to be involved in on the ground and you know working with Lou to narrate it and interview folks and I'll be back in the field you know all throughout the state for the next couple of months and Beyond that's awesome well John let me know when that comes out and I will definitely let people know I put it on my Instagram and Twitter and all that jobs awesome thanks Joe and thank you thank you for everything that you've done man mean it's amazing and thank you for sharing this story too because if

did not listen to that Steve rinella show I would have no idea I'd only heard my friend talked about that one grow up that they found but there was no one there and I would never have known there's gunfights and all this crazy shit that you guys are dealing with yeah Stephen was great because he he thought you'd like like the story too and I love your show and I got to give a guy like how Killer Mike gave a couple shout outs on a previous show so if you'll indulge me I'll give a couple shout outs here in a minute but one of the things that I always liked was how you approach this whole issue you know and how you came into it not being a hunter early on in your life all life and you come into it you know fairly later in life but just connected you know and coming from such a broad demographic of listeners that are sometimes out of my world previously so thank you for your doing and this will be really cool because the guy's a mediator saw it too and they and they you know to be able to connect here with you is really cool and hey the more we can do the message of better right yes for sure my pleasure so please one more time list the books tell

where they can get them you can get both books had more as a new one more in the woods is the first one on Amazon you can also get updates on my website just John Norris.com and it's and ores it is not Chuck not Chuck Uncle Chuck brother from another mother yeah he's in Orr is but yeah you can also hit me on Instagram and follow for all that stuff besides my website it's just Jo hn and ores and I do put this out there people want to email me directly and they want a signed copy of the book or they have questions and since mediator another podcast I get so many people want to be game wardens now coming out of the military a little kids growing up and I've been non-stop on that since since Steve show that's amazing so we're getting more people out there but for could get you guys more money we're working on it man yeah hopefully someone's listening to this yeah thanks for the sentiment but I got to give a shout out to Blake be and Brian and Blake's here in the green room with me now and I Gotta Give Them credit for tuning in to your podcast they're big fans so thank you guys and I'm also doing

in a I'm doing a Cool Custom Knife with Mike Miller camp out of e knives and we're making the Trailblazer custom folder it's like the dream knife Joe that I never had 30 years on Ops but it's an everyday carry so some stuff there and being an elk Hunter you'll appreciate this I'm doing some pretty cool stuff with axial Precision rifles their long-range rifle company to Idaho they're just amazing and my partner Terry human and I are running that new 300 PRC for everything from long distance from our tactical experience target shooting but also a good old gun and that's that's going to kind of become my new app platform so cool so this is all connected to you know because of this your effort that you put out all this all these pieces are falling into place yeah in these in these groups are it's not only about good product you know but it's about them sending the same message and they are endorsing the book they're getting that message out and a lot of these groups that are product sponsor anything didn't know it most people didn't so that's that's one of the really really cool things and my publisher Caribou publishing and this is interesting you know I think you'll appreciate

you how this kind of comes together but Henry Wu and my friends over at a Recoil magazine and gun digest and caribou and blade showing blade magazine they're all the same entity and this book with Caribou publishing was a step out an expansion book of national issues related to things they hold dear coming from a gun publication you know and written objectively not against cannabis so it's really a you know it didn't seem like the right fit you know when you look at it from the outside but it was perfect you know I think everybody wants the same objective right they want safety and for sure anybody who cares and loves about loves wildlife and these wild lands they don't want this to continue they want this to be cleaned up and we've got to find a solution we do and without you guys without boots on the ground there is no solution none at all not at all and like I said we keep unifying and we hope to just get more message out there will get some changes all right data time buddy thank you really really big brother thank you so much thank you we appreciate a job everybody

sounds great

thank you everyone for tuning into the show and thank you to policy genius National Life Insurance awareness month is this September right now it's going on and most people are just not aware of that and most people are also not aware how easy it is to get life insurance online through policy genius and not just life insurance they can help you get home insurance auto insurance disability insurance go to policy genius.com get quotes applying minutes you could do the whole thing on your phone right now take care of it like if you have people that love you and care for you and rely on you get some life insurance be a grown-up go to policy genius it is the easiest way for you to compare and buy life insurance thank you thank you thank you to Squarespace the host of Joe Rogan.com I fucking love Squarespace I recommend it to everybody I would recommend that even if they weren't a sponsor I would use them even if you are a sponsor it's fucking incredible it's the best service if you need to make a website you don't need to hire anybody anymore

you can do it all with Squarespace free and secure hosting again nothing to patch or upgrade ever 24/7 award-winning customer support and a simple easy to use drag-and-drop user interface along with Gorgeous designer templates you can't go wrong and you can try it for free that's how confident they are they want you to try it like just try it just try it you like oh my God it's amazing yes it's amazing go to squarespace.com Joe for a free trial then when you're ready to launch use the offer code Joe and you will save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and thank you also to the motherfucking cash app just not just a great application but an amazing company with the amazing morals and ethics and when you download the cash app from the app store or the Google Play Market use the referral code Joe Rogan all one word you will get $10 not five but 10 and the cash app will also send ten dollars to support

our good friend Justin wrens fight for the Forgotten charity to build Wells they're building Wells for the pygmies in the Congo and this is to the end of August download the cash app from the app store or the Google Play Market use that promo code Joe Rogan and you get 10 bucks and 10 bucks goes to an amazing cause they're building Wells and Justin ran is just fucking got another parasite he's got another problem that keeps going over there and helping people and getting sick because of it the man is a he really is an angel we love them so thank you thank you thank you to the cash app thank you to John Norris thank you for listening love to you all bye-bye