Cannabis Program

California is unique and diverse with the highest level of biodiversity in the entire nation. CDFW has a public trust responsibility to protect and conserve California’s fish and wildlife resources.

Cannabis cultivators, like other project proponents, must comply with Fish and Game Code and other regulations. Working together, we can ensure environmentally-friendly cannabis cultivation.

Report Illegal Cannabis Grows on Public Lands

Call 888-334-2258 or Text to 847411 (TIP411)

Watch It Now

CDFW hosted two online workshops to review how licensed cultivators can stay up to date with their Lake or Streambed Alteration (LSA) agreement and what to do when it is expired or when the project authorized by the agreement is complete.

July 22, 2020 Presented by CDFW, Department of Cannabis Control (formerly CalCannabis) and State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board).

Online Commercial Cannabis Permitting Workshop (Video)
- Spanish edition (Video)
- Hmong edition (Video)

About the CDFW Cannabis Program

thumbnail cover of CDFW 2019 Cannabis Program Summary - link opens in new window

2019 CDFW Cannabis Program Summary (PDF)

CDFW 2018 Cannabis Annual Report Image 100 - link opens in new window

2018 CDFW Cannabis Annual Report (PDF)

Permitting

Environment

How cannabis cultivation can impact the environment
Rodenticide impact on wildlife and the environment
Pesticides legal to use in cannabis cultivation
Study Plan (PDF) and Fact Sheet (PDF) about a CDFW pilot study investigating the relationship between aquatic habitat quality parameters and stream flow in watersheds with and without current cannabis cultivation
Review of Potential Impacts of Cannabis Cultivation on Fish and Wildlife Resources (PDF)

Restoration

Enforcement

Reports and Publications

General Information

National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC). 2009. Domestic cannabis cultivation assessment 2009 (PDF). United States Department of Justice, Washington D.C., USA.
Babcock, H. M. 2017. Illegal marijuana cultivation on public lands: Our federalism on a very bad trip (PDF). Ecology Law Quarterly 43:473-780.
Butsic, V. and J. C. Brenner. 2016. Cannabis (Cannabis sativa or C. indica) agriculture and the environment: a systematic, spatially-explicit survey and potential impacts. Environmental Research Letters 11:044023.
Carah, J. K., J. K. Howard, S. E. Thompson, A. G. Short Gianotti, S. D. Bauer, S. M. Carlson, D. N. Dralle, M. W. Gabriel, L. L. Hulette, B. J. Johnson, C. A. Knight, S. J. Kupferberg, S. L. Martin, R. L. Naylor, and M. E. Power. 2015. High time for conservation: Adding the environmental to the debate on marijuana liberalization. BioScience 65:822–829.
Rose, J., M. T. J. Brownlee, and K. S. Bricker. 2015. Managers’ perceptions of illegal marijuana cultivation on U.S. federal lands. Society & Natural Resources 29:185-202.
Vitiello, M. 2016. Legalizing marijuana and abating environmental harm: An overblown promise? (A Draft). UC Davis Law Review 50. Pacific McGeorge School of Law Research Paper.

Habitat Loss and Fragmentation

Burns-Edel, T. 2016. Environmental impacts of illicit drug production. Global Societies Journal 4:1–14.
Cushman, S. A. 2006. Effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on amphibians: A review and prospectus. Biological Conservation 128:231-240.
Mallery, M. 2010. Marijuana National Forest: Encroachment on California public lands for cannabis cultivation. Berkeley Undergraduate Journal 23:1–17.
Milestone, J. F., K. Hendricks, A. Foster, J. Richardson, S. Denniston, A. Demetry, M. Ehmann, C. Cuvelier, D. Schifsky, and D. Fireman. 2011. Continued cultivation of illegal marijuana in U.S. western national parks. (PDF) Pages 209–216 in S. Weber, editor. Rethinking Protected Areas in a Changing World: Proceedings of the 2011 George Wright Society Conference on Parks, Protected Areas, and Cultural Sites. The George Wright Society, Hancock, MI, USA.
Murcia, C. 1995. Edge effects in fragmented forests: Implications for conservation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10:58–62.
Wang, I. J., J. C. Brenner, and V. Butsic. 2017. Cannabis, an emerging agricultural crop, leads to deforestation and fragmentation. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 15:495–501.

Dams and Stream Crossings

Kupferberg, S. J., W. J. Palen, A. J. Lind, S. Bobziern, A. Catenazzi, J. Drennan, and M. E. Power. 2012. Effects of flow regimes altered by dams on survival, population declines, and range-wide losses of California river-breeding frogs. Conservation Biology 26:513–524.
Santucci, Jr., V. J., S. R. Gephard, and S. M. Pescitelli. 2005. Effects of multiple low-head dams on fish, macroinvertebrates, habitat, and water quality in the Fox River, Illinois. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 25:975–992.

Water Diversion

Anderson, E. P., M. C. Freeman, and C. M. Pringle. 2006. Ecological consequences of hydropower development in Central America: Impacts of small dams and water diversion on neotropical stream fish assemblages. River Research and Applications 22:397-411.
Bunn, S. E., and A. H. Arthington. 2002. Basic principles and ecological consequences of altered flow regimes for aquatic biodiversity (PDF). Environmental Management 30:492-507.
Deitch, M. J., G. M. Kondolf, and A. M. Merelender. 2009. Surface water balance to evaluate the hydrological impacts of small instream diversions and application to the Russian River basin, California, USA (PDF). Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 19:274-284.
Freeman, M. C., and P. A. Marcinek. 2006. Fish assemblage responses to water withdrawls and water supply reservoirs in piedmont streams. Environmental Management 38:435-450.
Friedman, J. M., W. R. Osterkamp, M. L. Scott, and G. T. Auble. 1998. Downstream effects of dams on channel geometry and bottomland vegetation: Regional patterns in the Great Plains. Wetlands 18:619-633.
Grantham, T. E., and J. H. Viers. 2014. 100 years of California's water rights system: patterns, trends, and uncertainty. Environmental Research Letters 9:084012.
Griffith, C. 2016. The grass is greener where you water it: Regulating water use for marijuana cultivation to curb California's severe drought (PDF). Hastings Environmental Law Journal 22:85-105.
Harvey, B. C., R. J. Nakamoto, and J. L. White. 2006. Reduced streamflow lowers dry-season growth of rainbow trout in a small stream. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 135:998-1005.
Jonsson, N. 1991. Influence of water flow, water temperature and light on fish migration in rivers. Nordic Journal of Freshwater Research 66:20-35.
Kupferberg, S. J., W. J. Palen, A J. Lind, S. Bobziern, A. Catenazzi, J. Drennan, and M. E. Power. 2012. Effects of flow regimes altered by dams on survival, population declines, and range-wide losses of California river-breeding frogs. Conservation Biology 26:513-524.
Marine, K. R., and J. J. Cech, Jr. 2004. Effects of high water temperature on growth, smoltification, and predator avoidance in juvenile Sacramento River chinook salmon (PDF). North American Journal of Fisheries Management 24:198-210.
Kondolf, G. M., and R. J. Batalla. 2005. Chapter 11: Hydrological effects of dams and water diversions on rivers of Mediterranean-climate regions: examples from California (PDF). Developments in Earth Surface Processes 7:197-211.
McKay, S. F., and A. J. King. 2006. Potential ecological effects of water extraction in small, unregulated streams. River Research and Applications 22:1023-1037.
Moore, M. K., and V. R. Townsend. 1998. The interaction of temperature, dissolved oxygen and predation pressure in an aquatic predator-prey system. Oikos 81:329-336.
O'Hare, M., D. L. Sanchez, and P. Alstone. 2013. Environmental risks and opportunities in cannabis cultivation (PDF). BOETC Analysis Corps. University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Poff, N. L., J. D. Allan, M. B. Bain, J. R. Karr, K. L. Prestegarrd, B. D. Richter, R. E. Sparks, and J. C. Stromberg. 1997. The natural flow regime: a paradigm for river conservation and restoration. BioScience 47:769-784.
Scanlon, B. R., I. Jolly, M. Sophocleous, and L. Zhang. 2007. Global impacts of conversions from natural to agricultural ecosystems on water resources: Quantity versus quality. Water Resources Research 43:W03437.
Smith, S. D., A. B. Wellington, J. L. Nachlinger, and C. A. Fox. 1991. Functional responses of riparian vegetation to streamflow diversion in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Ecological Applications 1:89-97.
Wootton, J. T., M. S. Parker, and M. E. Power. 1996. Effects of disturbance on river food webs. Science 273:1558-1561.

Pesticides (Insecticides, Herbicides, and Rodenticides)

Annett, R. H. R. Habibi, and A. Hontela. 2014. Impact of glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides on the freshwater environment. Journal of Applied Toxicology 34:458-479.
Augspurger, T., M. R. Smith, C. U. Meteyer, and K. A. Converse. 1996. Mortality of passerines adjacent to a North Carolina corn field treated with granular carbofuran. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 32:113-116.
Berny, P. 2007. Pesticides and the intoxication of wild animals. Journal of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics 30:93-100.
Egea-Serrano, A., R. A. Relyea, M. Tejedo, and M. Torralva. 2012. Understanding of the impact of chemicals on amphibians: A meta-analytic review. Ecology and Evolution 2:1382-1397.
Elliott, J. E., S. Hindmarch, C. A. Albert, J. Emery, P. Mineau, and F. Maisonneuve. 2013. Exposure pathways of anticoagulant rodenticides to nontarget wildlife (PDF). Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 186:895-906.
Elliot, J. E., B. A. Rattner, R. F. Shore, and N. W. Van Den Brink. 2016. Paying the pipers: Mitigating the impact of anticoagulant rodenticides on predators and scavengers. BioScience 66:401-407.
Erickson, W., and D. Urban. 2004. Potential risks of nine rodenticides to birds and nontarget mammals: a comparitive approach (PDF). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington D.C., USA.
Fleischli, M. A., J. C. Franson, N. J. Thomas, D. L. Finley, and W. Riley, Jr. 2004. Avian mortality events in the United States caused by anticholinesterase pesticides: A retrospective summary of national wildlife health center records from 1980 to 2000. Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 46:542-550.
Franklin, A. B., P. C. Carlson, A. Rex, J. T. Rockweit, D. Garza, E. Culhane, S. F. Volker, R. J. Dusek, V. I., Shearn-Bochsler, M. W. Gabriel, and K. E. Horak. 2018. Grass is not always greener: Rodenticide exposure of a threatened species near marijuana growing operations. BMC Research Notes 11:1-8.
Freemark, K., and C. Boutin. 1995. Impacts of agricultural herbicide use on terrestrial wildlife in temperature landscapes: A review with special reference to North America. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environments 52:67-91.
Gabriel, M. W., L. V. Diller, J. P. Dumbacher, G. W. Wengert, J. M. Higley, R. H. Poppenga, and S. Mendia. 2018. Exposure to rodenticide in Northen Spotted and Barred Owls on remote forest lands in northwestern California: evidence of food web contamination. Avian Conservation and Ecology 13:art2.
Gabriel, M. W., L. W. Woods, G. M. Wengert, N. Stephenson, J. M. Higley, C. Thompson, S. M. Matthews, R. A. Sweitzer, K. Purcell, R. H. Barrett, S. M. Keller, P. Gaffney, M. Jones, R. Poppenga, J. E. Foley, R. N. Brown, D. L. Clifford, and B. N. Snacks. 2015. Patterns of natural and human-caused mortality factors of a rare forest carnivore, the fisher (Pekania pennanti) in California. PLoS ONE 10:e0140640.
Gabriel, M. W., L. W. Woods, R. Poppenga, R. A. Sweitzer, C. Thompson, S. M. Matthews. J. M. Higley, S. M. Keller, K. Purcell, R. H. Barrett, G. M. Wengert. B. N. Sacks, and D. L. Clifford. 2012. Anticoagulant rodenticides on our public and community lands: Spatial distribution of exposure and poisoning of a rare forest carnivore. PLoS ONE 7:e40163.
Hosea, R. 2000. Exposure of non-target wildlife to anticoagulant rodenticides in California (PDF). Pages 236-244 in T. P. Salmon and A. C. Crabb, editors. Proceedings of the 19th Vertebrate Pest Conference. University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
Kiesecker, J. M. 2002. Synergism between trematode infection and pesticide exposure: A link to amphibian limb deformities in nature? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99:9900-9904.
Kotthoff, M., H. Rüdel, H. Jürling, K. Severin, S. Hennecke, A. Friesen, and J. Koschorreck. 2018. First evidence of anticoagulant rodenticides in fish and suspended particulate matter: spatial and temporal distribution in German freshwater aquatic systems. Environmental Science and Pollution Research.
Mineau, P., M. R. Fletcher, L. C. Glaser, N. J. Thomas, C. Brassard, L. K. Wilso, J. E. Elliot, L. A. Lyon, C. J. Henny, T. Bollinger, and S. L. Porter. 1999. Poisoning of raptors with organophosphorus and carbamate pesticides with emphasis on Canada, U.S., and U.K. Journal of Raptor Research 33:1-37.
Mineau, P., and M. Whiteside. 2013. Pesticide acute toxicity is a better correlate of U.S. grassland bird declines than agricultural intensification. PLoS ONE 8:e57457.
Pimentel, D. 2005. Environmental and economic costs of the application of pesticides primarily in the United States. Environmental, Development and Sustainability 7:229-252.
Rattner, B. A., and F. N. Mastrota. 2018. Anticoagulant rodenticide toxicity to non-target wildlife under controlled exposure conditions. Pages 45-86 in N. van den Brink, J. Elliot, R. Shore, and B. Rattner, editors. Anticoagulant Rodenticides and Wildlife: Emerging Topics in Ecotoxicology (Principles, Approaches and Perspectives), Volume 5. Springer International Publishing, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Relyea, R. A., and N. Diecks. 2008. An unforeseen chain of events: lethal effects of pesticides on frogs at sublethal concentrations. Ecological Applications 18:1728-1742.
Stone, W. B., J. C. Okoniewski, and J. R. Stedelin. 1999. Poisoning of wildlife with anticoagulant rodenticides in New York. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 35:187-193.
Thompson, C., R. Sweitzer, M. Gabriel, K. Purcells, R. Barrett, and R. Poppenga. 2014. Impacts of rodenticide and insecticide toxicants from marijuana cultivation sites on fisher survival rates in the Sierra National Forest, California. Conservation Letters 7:91-102.
Tiemann, U. 2008. In vivo and in vitro effects of the organochlorine pesticides DDT, TCPM, methoxychlor, and lindane on the female reproductive tract of mammals: A review. Reproductive Toxicology 25:316-326.
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). 2000. Conservation buffers to reduce pesticide losses (PDF). Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA, Washington, D.C., USA.
Van den Brink, N. W., J. E. Elliott, R. F. Shore, and B. A. Rattner. 2018. Anticoagulant rodenticides and wildlife: Introduction. Pages 1-9 in N. van den Brink, J. Elliot, R. Shore, and B. Rattner, editors. Anticoagulant Rodenticides and Wildlife: Emerging Topics in Ecotoxicology (Principles, Approaches and Perspectives), Volume 5. Springer International Publishing, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Light Pollution

Gaston, K. J., J. Bennie, T. W. Davies, and J. Hopkins. 2013. The ecological impacts of nighttime light pollution: a mechanistic appraisal. Biological Reviews 88:912-927.
Gern. W. A., D. O. Norris, and D. Duval. 1983. The effects of light and temperature on plasma melatonin in neotenic tiger salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum). Journal of Herpetology 17:228-234.
Longcore, T., and C. Rich. 2004. Ecological light pollution - Review. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environmental 2:191-198.
Miller, M. W. 2006. Apparent effects of light pollution on signing behavior of American robins. The Condor 108:130-139.
Navara, K. J., and R. J. Nelson. 2007. The dark side of light at night: physiological, epidemiological, and ecological consequences (PDF). Journal of Pineal Research 43:215-224.
Rowse, E. G., D. Lewanzik, E. L. Stone, S. Harris, and G. Jones. 2015. Dark matters: The effects of artificial lighting on bats. Pages 187-213 in C. Voigt and T. Kingstone, editors. Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World. Springer International Publishing, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Tabor, R. A., G. S. Brown, and V. T. Luiting. 2004. The effect of light intensity on sockeye salmon fry migratory behavior and predation by cottids in the Cedar River, Washington. North American Journal of Fisheries Management 24:128-145.
Wise, S. 2007. Studying the ecological impacts of light pollution on wildlife: Amphibians as models (PDF). Pages 209-218 in C. Marín and J. Jafari, editors. StarLight: A Common Heritage, Proceedings of the StarLight 2007 Conference, International Initiative in Defense of the Quality of the Night Sky and Right to Observe the Stars. StarLight Initiative, Instituo de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain.