By this time in recent years, local police agencies already would have trudged miles into remote forestlands to jerk hundreds of thousands of marijuana plants linked to Mexican drug cartels out of the ground and burn them.
The cartels, police say, are responsible for virtually all of the major marijuana gardens on public lands. The "cartel grows," as police call them, are a danger to the public and an environmental catastrophe. Some cartel operations have been booby-trapped and guarded by armed sentinels. Police in Northern California have engaged in gun battles with suspects in...