In this June 28, 2017, photo, marijuana plants grow at the Desert Grown Farms cultivation facility in Las Vegas. Frenzied activity at these facilities have been focused on one goal: Getting ready for the start of recreational marijuana sales Saturday in Nevada. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Feds nab 2,300 plants in high desert Nevada raid

RAILROAD VALLEY, Nev. — Nye County sheriff’s deputies are looking for two suspected drug-traffickers following a state and federal drug raid at an illegal marijuana farm on national forest land in a remote part of Nevada’s high desert about 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of Las Vegas.

The sheriff’s office says authorities confiscated more than 2,300 pot plants from a mountainside in the Railroad Valley about 60 miles (96 kilometers) southwest of Ely on Sept. 29.

Two suspects who fled on foot remain at large, but investigators say they collected a DNA sample from their camp.

The sheriff says it took about a dozen helicopter flights to remove all the plants and bury them in a large pit.

The U.S. Forest Service led the raid, with help from the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, sheriff’s office and state game wardens.