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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.
Let's just let everybody know what this is about. You were a game warden, or you are a game warden. 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, it's normal stuff. Like catching people doing something they're not supposed to, just making sure people follow the rules. Along the way, you guys started discovering these illegal grow ops where cartels were growing marijuana. And you turned from being a regular game warden to essentially, well, why don't you let us know how it worked out? Yeah, Joe, it was a crazy journey because you don't think of game warden's doing the type of work we were doing when it come to the trespass gross and the cartel issue. What do everybody think? They think game warden's check fishing licenses. Check your deer tag or elk tag, look for too many animals, poaching, spotlighting. And honestly, when I started the job, I got hired back in 1992, that's what I dreamed of doing. I grew up hunting and fishing and I got my hunter safety certificate with dad's help at nine years old. So I was all in the woods. The woods are my church, I just loved it because three generations of family, my grandfather's career Navy, my dad, was an army guy and we just had conservation in our family for generations. So I got the job, did it, and 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 from LA here and working all the traditional stuff. Fishing regulations, night hunting, working deer openers is really cool to be a deer hunter for all those years and then actually go talk to guys on the other side and see all the good guys out there and some problems. And then in 1995, I got to 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 cartel, what we call a trespass marijuana grow site. And to specify this stuff now, now that we're regulating the last couple of years here in California, these are not sanctioned 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 on public lands, destroying our environmental waterways and our wildlife and on private land as well. And on that situation, I 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 Henry Coast State Park where I really met my first game horn that was an inspiration to get the job. So these waterways are really sensitive. Headwaters coming down through this stretch are like three miles, all these endangered species in it, black-tailed deer, all these other great animals we like as conservationists that are 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, "'everything living on this creek is dead. "'There's a bunch of 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 figure, I'm thinking, okay, someone's diverting water up there, it's probably a rancher needing it for cattle operation or whatever. We go to the top of the hill, Joe, then we start the hike down. And I'm by myself, I 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, a 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 when we found the water source in a beautiful canyon, I mean, Crystal Clearwater, Trout Creek, the whole nine, start hiking down it, following this, we see the dam, we see the water line, go about 100 yards down this beautiful little Grand Canyon-like creek, and there's a bunch of marijuana plants. And they're short, because it's early in the season, they're only about two feet tall, and we see two growers. And they're not the growers on tip that I would have suspected. These guys are, they got rifles, they got handguns, they got knives, and they're kinda cruising, working their plants, coming toward us. And that was that, oh shit, moment. 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 kinda hid out, he's a hunter, I'm a hunter, we stayed using our stocking and staying to the creek bank, and just watched as these guys worked their plantation and went on up the hill. And I looked at this and went, what did 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 forces, the sheriff's office. 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 wanna 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 at 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 gonna lead the raid. And we'll say, of course, this is your jurisdiction, we don't normally do this type of stuff, so go for it. So we were the bird dogs, we kinda guided them into the area. We had like 20, 30 officers. We kinda led them down to the canyon, got them in there safely. We found the two growers, we spooked them, they didn't get caught that day. They ran down the canyon, nobody pursued, some of us wanted to, obviously, because of the environmental damages, but the biggest thing that changed the game for me that day was seeing the environmental damage. So that was a 7,000 plant garden, and at the time we didn't know about these band toxic substances, these insecticides, carbofurin, that they're bringing up from Tijuana and transporting, actually smuggling from across 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, we 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 to 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 illegal marijuana out, but what are we gonna do about all this environmental damage? And nobody was reclamation the damage or cleaning up any of this mess. So the first thing I thought was, we have a resource issue that's crazy. I mean, I've spent my whole career up to this point, protecting wildlife, preserving waterways for all of us to enjoy, conservationists, enthusiasts, whatever side of the fence you're on. And nothing was getting done on that. So kind of the light bulb went off a little bit that we need to do more to this if we're gonna get involved and we need to get involved in these type of grow operations because it was the biggest environmental 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 everyone out and chopped all the plants up or did what they did, did they try to reclaim the creek? Did they try to remove the dam and get the water to run back again? At that time, no. No one was doing it right. And that was exactly 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 narcotics task force guys or anything like that at the time. So I wasn't gonna 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 my bosses and go, hey, we got a big, big problem out there, man. And there's more of this going on and we need to be involved even though it's not traditional because we're starting to protect our resources. And well, besides everything game wardens do that you think of from the wildlife standpoint, or 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 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 gonna 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 SWAT and special operations units that would go in and do this job. Under normal circumstances, if that was just being diverted by a rancher, so if a rancher had done that and the creek was dry, how would you fix that? We would have got with him and it's what's called a stream at alteration violation. And in 1602 in our Fish and Game Code is the section, and it's a very common section because water's diverted for a lot of reasons. And you can divert water with a permit in certain circumstances, but you can't completely denude 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 just have the flow come back to exactly how it was before to remove the dam and that would be up to the rancher? That would be up to the rancher, be part of a penalty. It could be a civil, it could be a criminal, it could be a probationary fix it and you're okay. It just depends. 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. Right, exactly. It was completely brand new. And this was one of the first grows I think that any of us had found throughout the state of California is game orders. I mean, there were other guys finding some things and working, but being from the Silicon Valley and being inspired by those wildlands to everything I became later and what I stand for, it was home, you know, and it hit home. But seeing that and getting to meet certain guys from the sheriff's department and my first book goes into this whole learning experience of ad hoc jumping in with other agencies and doing it. Is this the hidden war? This was the first book, War in the Woods. War in the Woods. So you wrote War in the Woods and then Hidden War is the new one? Yeah, Hidden War is the brand new one that just came out and they're basically 10 years apart. And the cool part about that, Joe, is when you look at the differences, you do some major comparisons and what War in the Woods covers is that, chapter one is that first mission I'm telling you about right now because that was like, bing, here it is. We're not in Kansas anymore, so it's crazy. The people at the higher ups that were in charge of trying to eradicate the grow up and take the cartel guys down, so that was their job, was just handling that. It was just handling the marijuana aspect of it, right? Right. And 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 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's standpoint, you may see the damages but it may not register. There might not be a mandate or even objective to clean that stuff up. And back at 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 cleanup you did. Now that would change fortunately. And we were a big part of making that change fortunately. But, and there wasn't a lot of funding or point kickback or value to catching bad guys, to catching some of these guys that were doing the damages. So a lot of teams then were dropping in on helicopter lines, cutting plants, getting a big plant count, getting funded for it, taking the weed out. And that was it. That's so crazy. Like, 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. Yeah, right. Okay, well, we got to resume the creek. Wouldn't that be like part of the plan? It would. That's... You would think it should be. Right. But it all... This is all basically new territory. Completely new. And so we're only talking about 15 years ago as well, which is really crazy. Yeah, 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 operations, since this one we just mentioned in 2004. And in August 5th of 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 the 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 in Los Gatos. We were in really steep arid country, you know, August, right before the A-Zone deer opener, we were all gearing up for that. And it 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's, the AK-47 derivative, sawed off shotguns. And they had the gross setup 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 didn't, you know, nobody in the country from the standpoint of a law enforcement team had ever been counter-attacked by these growers. We'd, you know, we'd chase them around, they'd run away. Sometimes we'd find weapons. Oftentimes we wouldn't. So this was just a real eye-opener. 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 almost didn't come home that day, I went, okay, this is super dangerous. We can't do this as standard patrol game wardens. We can't do this doing just the traditional stuff. We should stay involved in it because aside from being so violent, the environmental damages, Joe, were the worst I'd still ever seen. And they just kept getting worse and worse. The more operations I'd work in my home county, right? So we learned a lot from that. There were a lot of tactical lessons. There were 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 gonna talk about a little bit later.