Distribution of trespass cannabis cultivation and its risk to sensitive forest predators in California and Southern Oregon.

ABSTRACT: Illegal cannabis cultivation on public lands has emerged as a major threat to wildlife in California and southern Oregon due to the rampant use of pesticides, habitat destruction, and water diversions associated with trespass grow sites. The spatial distribution of cultivation sites, and the factors influencing where they are placed, remain largely unknown due to covert siting practices and limited surveillance funding. We obtained cannabis grow-site locality data from law enforcement agencies and used them to model the potential distribution of cultivation sites in forested regions of California and southern Oregon using maximum entropy (MaxEnt) methods. We mapped the likely distribution of trespass cannabis cultivation sites and identified environmental variables influencing where grower

SUBMITTER: Wengert GM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8409643 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature