How California's Marijuana Industry Is Destroying Its Forest Ecosystem

After studying the ecological consequences that marijuana farming had in Northern California, researchers from Ithaca College discovered that small farms were having a surprisingly big impact. The New York team points to forest fragmentation, soil erosion, and landslides equivalent to the damages caused by the lumber industry. 

The environmental impact from more than 4,000 new weed farms is ravaging the redwood ecosystem.


In a press release, the college’s Environmental Science Associate Professor Jake Brenner wrote that cannabis has significant environmental impacts despite its small spatial footprint. He suggests that policymakers put land-use and environmental regulations in place to help control the expansion of cannabis crops before the situation grows more widespread, given the increase in popularity since legalization of the plant.

''Look'' environmentalist Scott Greacen says ''Eleven new greenhouses just on the top of this ridge. Where does the water come from?''

"The single biggest threat to our environment right now has been unregulated cannabis," says Natalynne DeLapp, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, a grassroots group that spearheaded the effort to protect the Headwaters and its wildlife. "In the last 20 years we've seen a massive exponential growth in cannabis production in the hills of Humboldt County and we've seen really devastating environmental effects." 

“A bunch of fish may turn up dead in a creek, so we’ll go look, walk upstream, and inevitably run into a marijuana growth site,” added Lt. Patrick Foy, of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Protection.


Cannabis cultivation annually consumes one percent of the United States’ total electrical output. There is a huge amount of studies that show the great environmental toll of this massively growing industry, so can Marijuana ever be environmentally friendly?