Transcript Staff Writer

A call from a concerned farmer in southeast Norman led Cleveland County Sheriff's Department deputies and Norman police officers to a field of 8,889 "wild" marijuana plants growing on private property early Monday morning.

The plants ranged in size from 3 feet to 9 feet tall and would have a street value of up to $1,000 each, or around $8 million total, if allowed to grow and be harvested in the coming months, said Captain Doug Blaine, of the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department.

The plants, though naturally growing, were allegedly discovered by the landowner and appeared to have been periodically cultivated by unknown individuals, Blaine said. No arrests were made following seizure of the plants.

"(The land owner) didn't want it on there, and he let us know that he wanted us to come out here and take care of it," said Sheriff DeWayne Beggs, noting that Monday's find was the largest seizure in Cleveland County this year.

"This happens nearly once a year. That's because in Oklahoma, we have a problem with marijuana growing naturally, without anybody having to cultivate it. So we've been trying to do an eradication plan for over the past 12 to 14 years at least that I know, in that once a year we try to get to those fields and eradicate them as best as we can," Beggs said. "Sometimes we get into a situation where people have actually gone out and planted the marijuana and cultivated it and taken real good care of it, but in this particular place, we received information that there was some marijuana growing, and the landowner certainly didn't want it there."

While the plants seized Monday were removed by cutting the 8,889 plants by the stalks and burned, other times wild marijuana fields are killed by the use of chemicals such as Round-Up, said Beggs. Either way, "we try to get rid of it as much as possible," he said.

Melissa A. Wabnitz 366-3550 mwabnitz@normantranscript.com