FIFTH POT BUST YIELDS $2 MILLION IN PLANTS

More than 9,000 marijuana plants worth roughly $2 million were
destroyed in south Tuolumne County Thursday.

Members of the Tuolumne County Sheriff's Office and its Tuolumne
Narcotic Team, and CAMP -- the state Campaign Against Marijuana
Planting -- mulched and then burned 9,072 plants found in the Moccasin
area.

The bust was the fifth in a two-month span that has yielded nearly
12,000 plants that have been found and destroyed in the Mother Lode.

Sizable pot busts at remote sites are fairly common between July to
October, typically the harvest season for marijuana, because officials
from all law agencies are on the lookout for these illegal
plantations, according to the Sheriff's Department.

In 2006, the Tuolumne Narcotic Team uprooted and destroyed more than
80,000 plants in the county.

Thursday, the teams also seized a loaded .22 caliber semi-automatic
handgun, 9 mm ammunition and rifle ammunition, but no suspects were
caught.

"When they sense that we're coming into the area, they flee. They're
probably still wandering," said sheriff's spokesman Lt. Dan Bressler.
"They either wander and find another plot or get picked up."

Like many recent busts, evidence at the scene and the style of the
plot suggest the plants were a "Mexican DTO Grow" -- or Drug
Trafficking Organization, Bressler said.

The plants, between 6 and 30 inches tall when found, were located on
U.S. Bureau of Land Management land during a flyover by detectives
with the narcotic team.