The Brief

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a $700,000 settlement with LAist correspondent Josie Huang, who was arrested and injured by sheriff’s deputies while covering a 2020 protest in Lynwood. The settlement includes a requirement that the L.A. County Sheriff's Department re-train deputies on the rights of journalists.

In a legal claim against the county, Huang alleged deputies detained her without legal justification and used unjustified force because she was gathering news in a public place, according to the settlement.

Huang’s arrest drew widespread criticism from elected leaders and journalism organizations at the time. Deputies had claimed she interfered with their arrest of a protester. The district attorney’s office refused to file charges and a judge later found her factually innocent.

“This settlement upholds the rights of journalists and helps ensure that what happened to me won’t happen to other reporters,” Huang said in a statement. “My arrest was traumatic, but I hope that some good can still come of this experience.”

The settlement includes two mandated reforms at the sheriff’s department:

• A requirement that the LASD provide deputies with watch briefings on press rights before patrol assignments, like protests, in which they are likely to come into contact with members of the news media
• A requirement that the LASD issue written guidance to all employees on the law and policies governing their interactions with members of the news media.

Those laws include SB98, which protects journalists’ rights to cover demonstrations. Its passage was spurred in part by Huang’s arrest.

Supervisor Hilda Solis, who in 2021 introduced a motion in support of the state bill, said in a statement on Tuesday that she "was grateful that the bill was eventually signed into law in 2021 by Governor Gavin Newsom and that members of the press have more safeguards to continue to cover critical stories for our communities.”

Settlement 'sends a strong message'

“This settlement sends a strong message and, importantly, holds officials accountable for what happened to our client,” said Katie Townsend, deputy executive director and legal director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which represented Huang, along with the law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher.

Townsend said it would help prevent unlawful arrests of journalists in the future.

Susan Seager, a UC Irvine law professor who specializes in press freedom, called the settlement “a huge win,” but was skeptical the reforms would change the behavior of deputies.

“I’m just cynical about the deputies out in the field treating reporters any differently than they have in the past,” said Seager, who has represented journalists in court. “I see settlement of lawsuits handled by the county counsel’s office and I don’t know how much the sheriff’s department really takes it to heart.”

Of the training, she said, “I’d like to see how good it is.”

The LASD issued a statement that did not directly address the settlement.

"There was a thorough internal investigation into this incident and the appropriate administrative action was taken," the department said. "We understand the role of the media during newsworthy events and make every effort to accommodate them with a designated press area and appropriate access."

County Supervisor Kathryn Barger issued a statement after she voted to approve the settlement.

“Reporters have rights that undeniably must be protected, and our County has processes in place to ensure members of the press are protected and supported," she said. "I am hopeful that this settlement brings some sense of closure to Ms. Huang and the press community at large.”

Will the settlement change police behavior?

UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz has written about how large monetary payouts in police misconduct cases don’t always lead to changes in police behavior. In her writing, she notes the amounts are often small compared to a county’s overall budget.

But she said the Huang settlement may be different.

“It's a somewhat unique case,” she said. “When it comes to using force against reporters, it seems like a pretty bright line for the department to draw that this is not the right conduct to engage in.”

At the same time, law enforcement abuse of journalists in L.A. is not uncommon, said Adam Rose, who is press rights chair at the Los Angeles Press Club.

“While most police-press interactions are pretty routine, our region's two biggest agencies (LASD and LAPD) have disturbing legacies of abusing press rights,” he said. “This is just one moment from decades of well-documented misconduct.”

Rose said he knew of at least nine lawsuits filed by L.A. journalists against LASD or LAPD for police brutality since 2020, the year George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police and street protests exploded.

Huang’s settlement is one of the largest in the nation to an individual reporter whose rights were violated while covering the 2020 protests.

In settling the case, the county admitted no wrongdoing.

“I would like to see some acknowledgement of wrongdoing — not just money,” said Christina Bellantoni, director of USC Annenberg’s Media Center. “It's so important that young journalists learning how to do this aren’t worried they are going to be violently hurt when doing their job.”

Huang echoed the sentiment in her statement, albeit for all journalists.

“Journalists in Los Angeles County should be able to record police activity in public without fear of unlawful arrest,” she said. “As the public’s eyes and ears, we must be able to cover protests and document how law enforcement responds to those protests.”

In a statement, LAist Executive Editor Megan Garvey praised Huang's focus on press freedoms.

"From the time Josie was released from jail, her top concern was doing everything she could to make sure what happened to her didn't happen to another journalist doing their job," Garvey said. "And that started in the car ride home, when we were able to start looking through what she'd recorded on her phone during the arrest."

Details of the 2020 incident

Huang, an award-winning journalist, was leaving a news conference by then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva when she started using her phone to film a group of deputies arresting a protester. A deputy ordered her to back away.

“Without giving her time to comply, deputies aggressively tackled Huang to the ground, causing her injury,” according to a statement from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Huang suffered multiple injuries, including scrapes and bruises to her knees, ankle and face, as well as emotional distress.

In a draft complaint, her lawyers wrote that “the force used was wildly out of proportion to that needed to effectuate the arrest of Ms. Huang, who, at 5’5 and 122 lbs., was far smaller than the multiple deputies who tackled her, posed no physical threat, and had not committed any crime.”

Huang’s phone fell to the ground. Two deputies stepped on it. The phone survived and was recovered by a fellow journalist. It documented much of what happened.

“Law enforcement tried to destroy evidence rather than preserve it,” said Michael Dore of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. “And then the former sheriff made false claims about Ms. Huang’s reporting work that the evidence refuted.”

Among other things, Villanueva said Huang never identified herself as a reporter. Huang’s video captures her shouting that she is a reporter. She was also wearing a lanyard with her press credential.

But the department continued to tweet false statements about Huang.

“LASD’s false Twitter posts were retweeted thousands of times, prompting a flood of racist and misogynistic slurs and threats directed at Ms. Huang and her family,” the draft complaint states.

A memo to the board of supervisors from the county’s litigation cost manager recommending approval of the settlement contained only the deputies’ account of what happened. The memo said the deputies involved were retrained, but makes no mention of discipline, which typically is confidential.

Hiring grew a little warmer last month after a chilly year in 2025.

A report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday showed U.S. employers added a better-than-expected 130,000 jobs in January — but an annual update shows hiring last year was much weaker than initially reported.

The news comes amid worries that the nation's jobs engine has been sputtering. Employment gains for November and December were revised down by a total of 17,000 jobs.

Once a year, the Labor Department updates its jobs tally with more accurate but less timely information drawn from unemployment tax records. Wednesday's revision shows there were nearly 900,000 fewer jobs in the economy last March than originally counted. On average, employers added only 15,000 jobs a month in 2025.
"This does not remotely look like a healthy labor market," Federal Reserve governor Chris Waller said in a statement anticipating the revision.
Waller urged his central bank colleagues to cut their benchmark interest rate last month in an effort to prop up the sagging job market. But most Fed policymakers voted to hold rates steady in January, after three rate cuts last year.

Healthcare and construction led way

Healthcare and construction were among the few industries that saw significant job gains in January. The warehouses and transportation industry lost jobs, and the federal government continued to shed workers. Manufacturing added 5,000 jobs while hospitality added just 1,000.

The unemployment rate dipped to 4.3% from 4.4% the month before. That's quite low by historical standards. The unemployment rate among African Americans also fell, but remains elevated at 7.2%.

Some of the weakness in job growth last year may reflect a drop in the number of available workers. The Trump administration has slammed the door on most people trying to enter the country, while aggressively deporting immigrants who have been living in the U.S. illegally. At the same time, many native born baby boomers are reaching retirement age and leaving the workforce.

But Waller says that explains only part of what's weighing on the job market.

"Employers are reluctant to fire workers, but also very reluctant to hire," Waller said in is statement. "This indicates to me that there is considerable doubt about future employment growth and suggests that a substantial deterioration in the labor market is a significant risk."

A few years ago, there were two job openings for every unemployed worker. By December, that had dropped to less than one. That slack in the job market means employers don't have to pay as much to attract and keep workers. Average wages in January were up 3.7%, compared to a 3.8% gain in December.

The monthly jobs tally is usually released on the first Friday of the following month, but the January count was delayed a few days because of last week's government shutdown.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Traffic collisions in Los Angeles killed 290 people last year, and more than 150 fatal collisions involved pedestrians, according to Los Angeles Police Department data.

That means L.A. is far from the goal it set more than a decade ago of reaching zero such deaths by 2025. Still, there was a 6% decrease in traffic fatalities compared to 2024. That tracks with trends that appear to suggest traffic fatalities are dropping nationwide.

“I was happy to see the decrease, but I believe we can do better,” Lonyá C. Childs, commanding officer of the South Traffic Division of the LAPD, told LAist.

Childs said prioritizing education about safe driving habits and enforcement of speeding and red light rules could further reduce traffic violence in L.A.

Traffic fatalities claimed more lives in the city last year than homicides, which, according to police data, are also on the decline. At a January rally demanding action on traffic violence, L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez pointed to this fact and said the city’s political institutions aren’t doing enough to bring traffic fatalities down.

“They don’t act with the level of urgency that they would [when] something is more sensationalist,” Soto-Martínez said. “But every single day, people are dying in our streets.”

How does L.A. compare nationally?

The early 2020s saw a sharp increase in traffic deaths nationwide, which researchers hypothesize is due to drivers adopting riskier behaviors on the road. The rate of traffic fatalities grew at a faster rate during that time period in L.A. compared to the U.S. as a whole, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Preliminary federal data show signs that traffic fatalities are decreasing nationwide.

“So changes that we're observing now are, in my mind, the transition out of the peak that happened [during] the COVID-19 pandemic,” Matthew Raifman, a transportation researcher at UC Berkeley, told LAist.

Data from the LAPD indicate that 2025 is the second consecutive year that traffic fatalities on city streets have decreased, but they remain higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Raifman said that, generally speaking, a sustained decrease over a three- to five-year window is a strong indicator of increased safety on roads.

What is the city doing about traffic violence?

In 2015, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti adopted a policy framework known as Vision Zero to zero out traffic deaths by last year.

The city has so far invested nearly $350 million as part of Vision Zero, according to data from the office of the city administrative officer.

Most of that money has supported making high-priority corridors in L.A. safer through various infrastructure projects, public outreach and speed surveys.

The city has also invested $13.5 million under the Vision Zero umbrella to fund overtime for LAPD officers to conduct speed safety enforcement along city streets that see the highest number of traffic-related injuries and collisions.

An audit released in April 2025 found that a lack of cohesion across departments, an unbalanced approach and insufficient political will ultimately hampered the city’s Vision Zero program. In response, the L.A. City Council late last year approved a suite of recommendations to revamp the program. 

In a statement, the office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said it “fully supported the implementation of the City’s new recommendations to strengthen traffic safety and achieve the goals outlined in Vision Zero.”

L.A. is expected to launch speed safety cameras throughout the city later this year. The program, which five other California cities are also piloting, will cite speeding drivers on dangerous roads.

The city’s Department of Transportation released the proposed locations for those cameras on Feb. 10.

Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where she's expected to face questions about the Justice Department's targeting of President Donald Trump's political foes and its handling of the Epstein files.

Bondi's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee comes one year into her tenure atop the Justice Department, a tumultuous period marked by a striking departure from the traditions and norms that have guided the department for decades.

Watch the hearing, set for 10 a.m. ET Wednesday, live:

Since taking the helm, Bondi has overseen the firing of career prosecutors and FBI officials who worked on Capitol riot cases or Trump investigations, investigated and prosecuted prominent opponents of the president, and dropped prosecutions of his allies.

The changes also extend to the department's workforce. The section that prosecutes public corruption has been gutted; the Civil Rights Division, which protects the constitutional rights of all Americans, has seen a mass exodus of career attorneys; and some U.S. attorney's offices — including most recently the one in Minnesota — have been hit by resignations.

In her public appearances, Bondi, who is a former Florida attorney general, has defended the department's actions and sought to tout what she says are major accomplishments — going after cartels and violent crime and helping in the administration's immigration enforcement.

She also says she's made "tremendous progress" toward ending what she says was the department's weaponization in recent years against Trump and conservatives. Biden-era DOJ officials deny they politicized the department, and they point to the prosecutions of prominent Democratic lawmakers and even President Joe Biden's son Hunter as evidence.

Accusations of politicization at DOJ

For decades, the Justice Department has enjoyed a degree of independence from the White House, particularly in investigations and prosecutions, to insulate them from partisan politics.

Critics say that under Bondi, that independence has disappeared and the Justice Department has helped enact Trump's promised campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies.

Last year, for example, the president openly directed Bondi to go after former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — two high-profile political adversaries of the president.

"We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," Trump said in a social media post addressed to Bondi. "They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"

Days after that, a new acting U.S. attorney hand-picked by Trump secured an indictment against Comey, overruling career prosecutors who had doubts about the strength of the evidence.

A few weeks later, that same prosecutor secured an indictment against James.

Both cases have since been tossed by a federal judge, who found that the prosecutor was unlawfully appointed. The Justice Department is appealing that decision.

Other perceived opponents of the president or individuals standing in the way of his agenda have also found themselves under DOJ investigation, including Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and former Obama-era intelligence officials James Clapper and John Brennan.

Despite the uproar from DOJ veterans and many legal experts, Bondi still enjoys Trump's support — publicly, at least — as well as the backing of Republican lawmakers.

She has faced criticism from some Republicans, however, over her handling of the files of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The criticism has been focused on the department's failure to meet the deadline to release all of the Epstein files, as required by law, as well as the heavy redactions to many of the documents.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Law enforcement raided the illegal cannabis operation in Shasta-Trinity National Forest months before, but rotting potatoes still sat on the growers’ makeshift kitchen worktop, waiting to be cooked.

Ecologist Greta Wengert stared down the pockmarked hillside at a pile of pesticide sprayers left behind, long after the raid. Wild animals had gnawed through the pressurized canisters, releasing the chemicals inside.

“They’re just these little death bombs, waiting for any wildlife that is going to investigate,” said Wengert, co-founder of the Integral Ecology Research Center, a nonprofit that studies the harms caused by cannabis grows on public lands. For all her stoic professionalism, she sounded a little sad.

For over a decade, Wengert and her colleagues have warned that illegal cannabis grows like this one dangerously pollute California’s public lands and pristine watersheds, with lasting consequences for ecosystems, water and wildlife.

Now, they’re sounding another alarm — that inadequate federal funding, disjointed communication, dangerous conditions and agencies stretched thin at both the state and federal level are leaving thousands of grow sites — and their trash, pesticides, fertilizers and more — to foul California’s forests.

Dozens of fertilizer bags wept blue fluid onto the forest floor. Irrigation tubes snaked across the craters of empty plant holes. The cold stillness felt temporary — as if the growers would return at any moment to prop up the crumpled tents, replant their crop and fling more beer cans and dirty underwear into the woods.

Wengert has tallied nearly 7,000 abandoned sites like this one on California’s public lands.

Greta Wengert, co-founder and co-director of the Integral Ecology Research Center, leads a team documenting the chemicals and environmental damage caused by an illegal cannabis site in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

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It’s almost certainly an underestimate, she said. Her team knows of only 587 that have been at least partly cleaned up.

No government agency can provide a comprehensive count; several referred CalMatters back to Wengert’s nonprofit for an unofficial tally.

Most of the sites Wengert’s team identified are in national forests, where “limited funding and a shortage of personnel trained to safely identify and remove hazardous materials” is driving a backlog in clean ups, a U.S. Forest Service spokesperson told CalMatters via an unsigned email.

The federal government, the spokesperson said, has dedicated no funding for the forest service to clean them up. And it’s leaving a mess in California.

A new playbook  

The federal government owns nearly half of the more than 100 million acres in California. But it’s California’s agencies and lawmakers taking the lead on tackling the environmental harms of illegal grows — even as the problem sprawls across state, federal and privately managed lands.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s policy is to clean up all grows spotted on its 1.1 million acres of wildlife areas, ecological reserves, and other properties, officials say.

Staff assist with clean ups on federal lands “when asked,” said cannabis program director Amelia Wright — typically on California’s dime. But, she said, “That’s not our mandate.”

Fees and taxes on California’s legalized cannabis market fuel state efforts — supporting the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis program and funding tens of millions of dollars in grants for rehabilitating places damaged by cultivation. These grants can cover clean-ups and sustainable cultivation projects, or even related efforts like fish conservation.

The department has helped remove almost 350,000 pounds of trash and more than 920 pesticide containers from grows on public lands over nearly a decade.

An aerial view of Post Mountain, where cannabis is grown on private land near the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

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But former Assemblymember Jim Wood, a North Coast Democrat, said that as he prepared to leave office in 2024, progress on cleanups was still too slow.

“It doesn't reflect what I see is the urgency to watersheds, and the water and the people that are served by them,” he said.

In 2024, lawmakers passed Wood’s bill directing the Fish and Wildlife department to conduct a study to inform a statewide cleanup strategy for cannabis grows. The law requires the department to provide regular reports to the legislature about illegal cultivation and restoration efforts on lands both public and private.

To Wright, that’s a path forward, however prospective it may be.

“It just feels like such redemption right now for many of us,” Wright said. “It's a one of a kind program. So we didn't have a playbook — we're still creating it.”

But the study, which Wengert’s organization is conducting on the state’s behalf, isn’t due until next year. Meanwhile, the bloom of illicit pot grows on private land has been demanding California's attention, a growing problem since voters legalized cannabis in 2016.

“It's like whack-a-mole. They pop up in a new location, and then we have to go there — but the impacts are occurring across the landscape,” said Scott Bauer, an environmental program manager with the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s cannabis office.

The California Department of Justice told CalMatters it recently identified a “substantial increase of illicit cannabis cultivations on or adjacent to public lands.” Of the 605 sites where a multi-agency state and federal task force ripped out illicit cannabis plants, roughly 9% were on public lands — up from an average of 3 to 4%.

“Everybody thought with legalization that a lot of these problems would go away,” said Wood, the former assembly member.

But, he added, the sites remain. “It’s a ticking environmental time bomb.”

And the contamination, new research confirms, lingers.

‘This site will sit on this landscape’

On a cold November morning, down one dirt road and up another, ecologist Mourad Gabriel led a safety briefing at the grow site in Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Gabriel, who previously spearheaded a U.S. Forest Service effort tackling trespass grows on public lands, co-founded the research center with Wengert and now co-directs it with her. He’s also her spouse and a foil to her calm watchfulness — dismayed by the state of the forest one moment and bounding off to investigate an interesting mushroom or animal scat the next.

“Please don't push the red shiny buttons, or lick the big pink things,” Gabriel joked at the mouth of a well-worn path growers had carved into the woods. (Carbofuran, a dangerous and illegal pesticide often found on grow sites, is bright pink.)

The team, Gabriel explained, wasn’t there to clean up the grow. They didn’t have the money for that. Instead, he said, shouldering his backpack and strapping on a first aid kit, they were there to document the contaminants as part of a U.S. Forest Service-funded investigation into wildlife around cultivation sites.

“This site will sit on this landscape until someone acquires some level of funding,” Gabriel said. “And no one can really push it, until we actually get that data.”

Jenna Hatfield, a member of Wengert’s team, takes notes at the grow site.

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Wengert and Gabriel have spent years collecting data at grow sites like this one. They’ve found carcasses of creatures so poisoned even the flies feeding on them died, and detected dangerous pesticides in nearby creeks more than a year after raids.

In recent work they published with scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the team found that illegal grows pulsed pollutants from plastic, painkillers, personal care products, pot and pesticides into the soil that could be detected months or even years later. Some contaminants also showed up in nearby streams.

The pollutants diminished over time — absorbed into the landscape and washed into waterways. By the time the researchers tested for them, the concentrations had declined to levels lower than those found in agricultural soils.

But, they point out, remote habitats and sensitive headwaters are not where these chemicals are supposed to be. Past a marshy flat cratered with holes and piled with poison-green insecticide bags, Gabriel, Wengert and ecologist Ivan Medel trailed an armed U.S. Forest Service officer to a massive trash heap cordoned off by barbed wire.

Medel wedged himself through the strands and handed empty fertilizer bags dripping blue liquid out to Gabriel.

Force-feeding waterways the excess nutrients in fertilizer can upend entire ecosystems and spur algae blooms. The site is in the greater South Fork Trinity River watershed — vital, undammed habitat for protected salmon and other fish species.

“That was pretty nasty,” Gabriel said, as one bag spilled liquid over his gloved hands. He counted up the haul. “Twelve bags right there.”

By day’s end, the team discovered enough empty bags and bottles to have held 2,150 pounds of fertilizer and more than 29 gallons of liquid concentrate. All of that, the growers had poured into the land.

A scientist walks through empty planting holes at the illegal cannabis site, where growers chopped away brush and laid irrigation lines.

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A federal void

In 2018, a federal audit lambasted the U.S. Forest Service for failing to clean up — or even document — trespass grows in national forests.

The agency was finding and eradicating cannabis grows in national forests effectively. But its failure to consistently clean them up, the audit said, put “the public, wildlife, and environment at risk of contamination” and could allow growers to return more easily.

Little has changed. From 2020 through 2024, when Gabriel worked for the agency, a spokesperson said the Forest Service “prioritized reclaiming sites over investigating active grows.”

But the agency said it still has received too little funding and has too few personnel trained to work with often hazardous materials. And the backlog persists. How big it is, the Forest Service wouldn’t say. After declining an interview request and taking two months to reply to emailed inquiries, a spokesperson said CalMatters must submit a public records request.

The Forest Service now is shifting the responsibility for cleanups to individual forests. That, too, contributes to the backlog, the spokesperson said.

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat and ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he has tried repeatedly to direct more funding to cleaning up trespass grows on federal lands, but with little success in Congress.

“We have tried just about everything,” said Huffman. “It’s clearly not enough.”

Now, under the Trump administration, the Forest Service is even more understaffed. A spokesperson said while law enforcement staffing “has remained steady,” roughly 5,000 non-fire employees “have either offboarded or are in the process of doing so” through “multiple voluntary separation programs.”

Huffman put it more starkly. “They’ve been gutted,” he said. “The Forest Service right now has a sign on the door that says, ‘We're out of the office. We're not sure when we'll ever be back.’”

Mourad Gabriel, co-founder of the Integral Ecology Research Center, looks at a bottle found in the abandoned camp.

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Cleaning it up

The Shasta-Trinity grow stretched for more than 6 acres through national forest land. Trash, and the smell of pot, were everywhere.

Law enforcement officers had removed the mouth of the irrigation tube diverting water from a nearby creek, but all the piping remained. It slithered over downed trees, past the craters of another abandoned grow to a waterfall where leaves and black tubing snarled in the rocks.

Gabriel clambered up the waterfall, where he discovered a sock and a plastic bottle with the top sliced off — a makeshift filter the growers used to keep the line clear of debris. He hung the bottle on a tree branch, like a ghoulish Christmas ornament.

Few organizations are qualified to do science-informed cleanups, and none work as widely as Wengert and Gabriel’s.

California’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program is paying the team more than $5.3 million to conduct the legislatively mandated study on cleaning up grow sites, and also to train and support tribal teams and other organizations to do this work.

The study, and the training, include best practices for handling and disposing of hazardous waste, Gabriel said. More teams means more competition for the pot of state-allocated money, but he wants more allies in the fight.

“Until someone cleans it up, it stays out here,” Gabriel said from his perch in the waterfall, surrounded by a tangle of black irrigation pipes. He expected it could take years.

Wengert and Gabriel follow an irrigation pipe that leads to the water source growers used to water their cannabis crop.

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Fred Greaves

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But that’s not what happened.

Two weeks later, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife choppered away nearly 1,500 pounds of trash, 4,000 feet of irrigation pipe and 7 pesticide containers — restoring the rugged, remote forest.

The department had offered to help out the U.S. Forest Service and take the lead on the clean up, with its own helicopter, on its own budget, according to spokesperson Sarah Sol.

Months later, when Gabriel learned about it, he was shocked — and concerned. Sol said that Fish and Wildlife staff did not encounter any banned or restricted pesticides, and all had masks and nitrile gloves available to them.

But Gabriel’s team found residue in the pesticide sprayers on the hillside from a class of chemicals that includes banned and dangerous carbofuran. He worried that the cleanup team could have unknowingly put themselves and others at risk.

“There is a proper way to do it, and there is a cowboy way to do it,” Gabriel said.

It’s one site down — one patch of forest cleared. But thousands like it remain, littering California’s landscape.