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PeteS
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Fri Feb 04, 11 12:38 pm Post subject: |
 
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| lettucewoman wrote: |
PeteS is the best person to know whether there's a problem in our forest...he is very knowledgeable and has been collecting for years! There is a commercial business here too...she got into trouble a few yars ago but got off becuase her family have been gathering mushrooms for years, and still selld commercially.
Can't say Ive seen gangs picking myself.... |
I saw these articles when they came out. Here is the full Mail article:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323471/Middle-class-foodies-forage-exotic-mushrooms-threaten-woodlands.html
They are rubbish. The Mail article contains so much bull that I don't know where to start. I resisted posting anything at the time because they tend to bring out the worse in people and there was enough non-sense going on in this forum (you know the threads) at the time.
I am out in the New Forest walking the dogs and foraging every day of the year. This season I was out even more (I don't have a 'real' job), sometimes for 6 hours per day. Did I see a problem with immigrants, or anyone else, overpicking? The answer is NO.
Now, the main reason that all this stuff got into the press last year is down to the cep. It was a good season for ceps. Eastern Europeans do like their ceps and when they were fruiting there certainly were a lot of people out picking. They will also pick other mushrooms too, but if the ceps aren't there they don't tend to bother. However, in general these people do not know the Forest well and concentrate one a few locations, usually not far from the road as most can't be bothered to walk very far. When I went out I still saw 100's of over-blown and past it ceps. Moreover, when the ceps went so did most of these people. For example, I saw hardly any evidence of people picking hedgehog fungi and they were fruiting in their 1000's. Winter chanterelles were everywhere. I saw NO-ONE and saw no evidence of anyone picking these. Hedgehog fungi and especially winter chanterelles are loved by chefs. A gang of commercial pickers could make a fortune. In one wood I guess a small gang of about 5 pickers could have picked around 50kg in a morning. Mrs Tee (the licensed commercial picker in the New Forest) sell these for �20/Kilo. That's �1000, not bad for a mornings work. Did I see anyone doing this? Did I see any evidence? Did I see middle-class, lower-class or anyone picking winter chanterelles at all? NO. Sure, people pick them (Mrs Tee and her gang of pickers certainly do) but it's generally rare. This applies to the majority of wild fungi in and around the New Forest.
The Mail article states:
"But now the apparently innocent pastime of mushroom picking could be threatening the countries' woodlands, conservationists say".
Well, as they say it "could be threatening the countries' woodlands" but equally it could not. In fact the evidence suggests that it is not. Here are a few examples:
Mushroom picking does not impair future harvests � results
of a long-term study in Switzerland...
https://www.wsl.ch/info/mitarbeitende//egli/egli_2006c
Ten-year harvesting data now imply that chanterelle removal may stimulate future chanterelle abundance...
https://www.pnw-ms.com/publications/1995.html#0001
There is also a 20 year Dutch study that supports the Swiss conclusion, but as far as I know it's not open source.
I am not talking about commercial picking and by that I mean the sorts of practices like raking that go on in countries that allow commercial picking. There certainly is evidence that these practices are bad. Even if we have commercial pickers (gangs in vans etc. in the UK) they do not use such techniques - it's a whole new level.
And in my view picking fungi is not driven by celebrity chefs. I find it hard to believe that immigrants are huge fans of the likes of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. As we know they all pick fungi in their home countries and have done for centuries. The number of British pickers in the New Forest is still small. During the whole of 2010 I saw no more than 11-15 British pickers. The majority of these (I talked to them) had been picking for years. A couple had been picking before Hugh was born.
In my view the real and over-ridding threat (which few mention) is loss of habitat. This is going on all around us right now and organisations like the Forestry Commission are to blame as much as anyone else. If the Forestry really cared about fungi in the New Forest they would not:
1. Cut down large areas of the Forest. I have seen places where I picked destroyed by the Forestry cutting down a wood for commercial gain. The fungi in these places die and they will take decades to recover if at all. The damage in one such wood does more damage than all the pesky immigrants and middle-class foodies put together.
2. Bracken 'control'...
https://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/Brackencontrol.pdf/$FILE/Brackencontrol.pdf
Asulam (they can't even spell it correctly) mushrooms anyone? As for 'forage harvesting' that's just commercial picking. Of course to do all of this they need vehicles that trample all the fungi and anything else they pass over.
3. They gave a commercial picker (Mrs Tee) a license for life to pick as many mushrooms in the new Forest as she likes.
Anyway, I need to get out, forage, and threaten our woodland. |
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PeteS
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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cab
Joined: 01 Nov 2004
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bubble
Joined: 13 Apr 2008
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