Park rangers and narcotics investigators were able to perform some Earth Day cleanup activities in Sequoia National Park last week, raiding and destroying a marijuana growing operation of nearly 8,000 pot plants.

Two suspected pot growers managed to get away by running down a steep embankment, but investigators hope evidence found in a tent at the grow site in the April 22 raid will provide them with leads toward some arrests.

Park spokeswoman Alexandra Picavet said news of the raid was kept under wraps for a week before today's announcement because investigators are still working the case in hopes of making future arrests.

Because the case remains open, investigators aren't saying just where within the sprawling park the grow site was. Picavet said this is the earliest springtime raid of a grow site that investigators have made, even though their efforts in the park service's Operation Weed Free is a year-round effort.

Rangers still need to go back to the site later this year to do more rehabilitation work. But in tearing out the plants and destroying the campsite, Picavet said, “all they were able to do is make it so they couldn’t come back and reestablish the garden without having to start from scratch.”

Not only was this the earliest such raid, it was also the only one Picavet knows of that included a scarecrow -- a hooded sweatshirt propped onto a stick with its arms outstretched on the mountainside, topped by a cap.

Photo courtesy of National Park Service, Sequoia National Park