Six arrested for pot operation in Calif. preserve

Associated Press • July 22, 2008 SACRAMENTO (AP) — State wildlife officials have arrested six men for growing $16 million worth of marijuana in an ecological preserve at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada. California Fish and Game spokesman Patrick Foy says two of the men were tending to more than 4,000 plants inside the Canebrake Ecological Reserve, near Lake Isabella in Kern County. At the same time, officers raided two homes over the weekend in Tulare County. They arrested four men they suspect of supplying materials for the growing operation. The Canebrake preserve is a 2,800-acre natural transition zone between the eastern Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert, where the south fork of the Kern River leaves the Sierra. It is considered a sensitive habitat and is home to the slender salamander, the foothill yellow-legged frog... [read full story]