Black Bears Hitting Maryland Farmers Where It Hurts

BALTIMORE (WJZ)—As Maryland crops approach harvest, they're already on the menu for black bears, but those free meals are costing farmers money.

Black bears usually attract attention when they show up in back yards, but in far western Maryland, the attention most often comes in farm fields.

"The truth is one bear in one cornfield is often too much for that individual farmer," said Paul Peditto, DNR Wildlife & Heritage Services. "They'll get in the middle of that cornfield and kind of roll around. They'll eat some of it. A lot of the damage does occur just by the pure volume of that animal; rolling around in that corn and physically crushing it."

Most damage occurs in Garrett and Allegany Counties, but as the population expands into Washington and Frederick counties, crop damage has been reported.

Two years ago, one farmer lost $3,800 worth in two nights.

And because bears like protective cover, the damage they leave, like these holes seen on YouTube, often go unnoticed from the ground.

"The farmer in that case won't know the damage has occurred until they're physically picking that corn and they come onto these pockets of nothing really," said Peditto.

Dogs are sometimes used to chase bears out of cornfields and some are trapped as nuisance bears by DNR, and moved to other areas.

During earlier bear hunts, farmer's fields proved a fatal attraction.

"And I went up to the edge of the cornfield about 80 yards out and I took a shot," said a hunter.

"The bear that this gentleman took was a prior nuisance bear that we captured. This is a hunt that directly targets some of the problem bears," said Peditto.

Overall, bears represent only a small part of crops lost to other animals and insects, but their impact on fields they do damage can be expensive.