Fires fuel fears of fungal feue
By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian
Mushroom harvest sometimes brings violence, vandalism

The wildfires of 2000 likely will yield the wild mushroom crop of 2001 on national forests in the northern Rockies -- and with it, thousands of commercial mushroom pickers competing for a multimillion-dollar cash crop.

Forest managers intend to be ready for the influx, and for potential violence and vandalism. "It could be 50 people or it could be 10,000 or more," said Stacie DeWolf, special forest products coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Region. "It's hard to say. We know these harvesters follow fire, and we know we've had a lot of fire." "And we know we'll need to manage these people when they come into the national forests, hopefully to avoid any kind of conflict," said Bill Fox, the Northern Region's top law enforcement officer. "Where you have a forest product that is very desirable and very lucrative, you always run the risk of violence. There's a potential for trouble."

And a history of trouble. "For the most part, the biggest problem is individual pickers getting pissed off at each other for encroaching," said J.W. Allendorf, a supervisory law enforcement officer on the Six Rivers National Forest in northern California, where high-dollar matsutake mushrooms grow.

"If Joe Citizen is out trying to pick a few mushrooms for dinner, he can end up in the crossfire," Allendorf said. "It's like anything else. You need to respect other people's space. It's no different than going fishing on a river that's got plenty of good fish. You don't wade out right next to someone else unless you want them firing a few rounds over your head."

Rangers on national forests in California and Oregon tell of gangs setting up roadblocks on backcountry roads and summarily robbing mushroom pickers and buyers, coming and going. Buyers are a prime target, Allendorf said, as they carry as much as $40,000 in cash. Sometimes, the violence is racially motivated; many commercial pickers are Asian or Russian. Sometimes, locals pick fights with the out-of-towners. There are tales of poaching and over-fishing. Sanitation problems are common at crowded campsites. Some pickers try to extend their backcountry reach by driving off-road vehicles into closed areas, damaging already fragile just-burned forests.

Thus the planning, which began last month, to manage the expected bounteous crop of mushrooms -- and mushroom pickers -- on 831,000 acres of national forest land burned last summer in the northern Rocky Mountains. By requiring permits of all commercial pickers. By designating separate mushroom-harvest areas for commercial and recreational pickers. By establishing ample campsites and sanitation near burned areas. By beefing up the law enforcement presence in remote parts of the national forests. By adopting a no-tolerance policy toward poaching, violence and illegal ATV use. By working with local communities to provide the laundry, food, gas and other services needed by transient commercial pickers.

"It's really about managing people, not about managing mushrooms," said Jeff Amoss, a resource staff officer on the Bitterroot National Forest, where 307,000 acres burned last summer. Amoss recently wrote the Ravalli County commissioners, sheriff, state agencies and Bitterroot Valley communities, alerting them to the possible influx of mushroom pickers. It could begin, he said, as early as March and continue into the fall. "We just want to be as prepared as we can to deal with the folks who come," Amoss said. "No matter what, people are going to come to harvest mushrooms, both commercially and recreationally. So we've got to gear up to handle them."

Morels are "fire mushrooms," appearing in forests the spring after a wildfire, stimulated first by the heat, then by the flush of nutrients. It is, more times than not, a one-year bounty. "By April, for sure, we'll start to see morels," said Steve Shelly, the Forest Service's regional botanist in Missoula. "It'll start at the lower elevations, and then progress higher with the snowmelt."

Morels are a fungal species that primarily live underground, Shelly said. The heat from a ground fire stimulates the fungus to produce an above-ground mushroom -- "kind of equivalent to flowering." Fire also clears the forest floor of duff and toasts the soil to give morels a fertile birthplace. The moonscapes created by some of last summer's fires likely won't produce big mushroom crops, as those soils have no nutrients. But where fires burned on the ground and in mosaics, there could be huge crops.

Picking is "very compatible" with mushrooms, Shelly said. "The organisms are primarily underground, so removing the above-ground mushrooms really doesn't hurt the fungi. It's like picking apples off a tree. You still have the tree." And while the exotic mushroom species of coastal forests command much higher prices than western Montana's white and black fire morels -- sometimes as much as $65 a pound for overseas markets -- morel mushrooms are nonetheless lucrative.

Early in the season, morels often bring pickers $5 a pound. When the supply exceeds demand, the price drops to $2 a pound. Mycologist Larry Evans said a single fire on the Payette National Forest in 1994 yielded $3 million worth of morels. "It was an almost perfect morel season that year," he said. "Commercial buyers were on the scene for 57 days, and many of them were buying $10,000 to $15,000 worth of mushrooms every day. The morel harvest on that fire was nearly as valuable as the salvage timber." Evans, who heads the Western Montana Mycological Association, said he hopes to urge restraint among the pickers who come to Montana this year.

A more leisurely paced season keeps mushroom prices high, and gives the mushrooms more time to grow to maturity, he said. "If it gets to be a race to the bottom, the commercial pickers will win," Evans said. "I'd like to try and keep it under control." Commercial mushroom pickers are professionals, he said. "These aren't poor people out scrabbling for pennies. They are, though, people who work out in the woods. They look dirty because they work out-of-doors." Pickers sell their day's harvest to buyers who do business out in the forest, then ship their purchases to restaurants, groceries or other buyers. Commercial buyers and pickers travel all over the western United States each summer, seeking out newly burned forests -- especially those close to highways and airports, said Sam Redfern, who is coordinating the Lolo National Forest's preseason mushroom planning. "We are pretty convenient," he said, "so we expect people are going to hit us pretty hard. The fires we had in the Ninemile and outside Superior are right off the interstate."

Commercial pickers started asking the forests for maps of burned areas last fall, Redfern said. They'll start flying the forests in another month, looking for likely mushroom habitat. "They know where to look," he said. "I don't." So Redfern is concentrating his efforts on talking with local residents and communities, preparing them for the new arrivals. "If thousands of people come, we're going to notice it," he said. "And these are folks that, from a diversity standpoint, aren't your western Montana, white AngloSaxon Protestant types. They are Vietnamese and Cambodians and Russians." "Some of these people won't be speaking English, and we won't be able to understand them," said Amoss, on the Bitterroot forest. "We've talked about hiring interpreters, although we aren't far enough along in our planning to know if that's really required."

DeWolf, the regional coordinator, met with representatives of all the "fire forests" in December. She suggested a permit system for commercial harvesters. Anyone picking five gallons or more of mushrooms needs to buy a permit -- $20 for seven days, $40 for 14 days, $60 for 21 days, $100 for the season. Recreational pickers don't need a permit, but they cannot pick more than five gallons. Commercial pickers will be given a list of burned areas where they can pick -- typically farther from communities. The close-totown mushrooms will be reserved for recreational pickers.

"You've probably heard of mushroom wars," DeWolf said. "Mushrooms can be very territorial. So we don't want to send recreational pickers into these commercial areas. It could be very intimidating." Fox, the regional law enforcement chief, said he'll deploy his officers regionally -- wherever morels (and pickers) are most plentiful.

Fox spent the last few months talking with his counterparts in Washington and Oregon, learning what to expect. Their reports included tales of poaching, illegal ATV use, overcrowded and unsanitary campsites, conflicts between commercial and recreational pickers, gunplay with buyers and sellers, erosion and water pollution. "Communication is going to be the name of the game," Fox said.

"We want to get in contact with the commercial harvesters and buyers early on. We want to be out in the forest contacting these folks." "But really, we don't want anyone to be alarmed," Allendorf said. "If people just show a little respect for each other, I wouldn't expect much trouble. It's no different than anything else."