Law enforcement officials on Thursday began removing 5,000 marijuana plants growing in the backcountry in Bandelier National Monument.

The park superintendent says that this is the first bust of this kind at a national park in the region.

The monument near Los Alamos remains largely closed to the public due to damage from the Las Conchas fire earlier this summer, and it's because of the fire that authorities discovered the sophisticated growing operation.

Superintendent Jason Lott said park workers spotted the pot field in rugged terrain last week when they flew a helicopter over areas in the northern part of the park that flooded after 3 inches of rain from back-to-back storms.

An interagency task force of about 35 personnel raided the area at 4:30 a.m. Thursday, then began the labor of ripping out the plants that they estimated could have had a street value in the million of dollars. The illegal site also featured an irrigation system, he said.

"We have not seen this kind of activity in any of our national parks in the intermountain region. This is the first time this has happened," Lott said during a phone interview. "It's really a learning experience for us. We are looking at how they are doing it and how they are hiding it and we are learning how to identify this type of activity. This is not going to be a problem for Bandelier in the future."

No one has been arrested, Lott said, but officials found evidence that several people have been living in the area to tend the garden for "quite some time now." Further, they suspect the growers worked to battle flames that came within feet of the operation.

"It's an extremely difficult place to get to and it's a place that visitors don't often get to. They had to have hiked in," said Lott. "It's in a very remote area."

Lott said parks workers plan to survey the entire park to look for other illegal operations.

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.