Burned forest land is yielding significantly more morel mushrooms than usual.
By Marcy Stamper
Fed by nutrients released into soil by scorched trees and foliage, morel mushrooms have been sprouting in areas burned in the Carlton Complex Fire — and pickers have been sprouting along with them in search of the prized fungi.
The U.S. Forest Service is selling commercial permits for mushroom gathering in the burned area. While they don’t keep track of the number of permits sold, the agency had collected about $13,000 in permit fees at its stations in Winthrop and Okanogan as of Monday (May 18), according to Shannon O’Brien, public affairs specialist with the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.
With prices of $20 for a two-day permit, $50 for a 30-day permit, and $100 for the season (through the end of July), even if people purchased multiple permits, that is a significant number of harvesters seeking their fortune in morels. Commercial pickers must get a second season permit if they want to gather mushrooms from August through the end of the year.
Nevertheless, compared to the season after the Tripod Fire, commercial mushroom harvest this year has been much smaller, said O’Brien.
Commercial mushroom pickers are restricted to areas that burned in the main Carlton Complex Fire. That means that other burned areas, including Little Bridge Creek on Twisp River and Upper Falls Creek in the Chewuch, are off limits.
For personal use, people may harvest up to three gallons of mushrooms a day for free. Noncommercial pickers are not restricted to the main Carlton Complex zone.
While much state land managed by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Department of Natural Resources also burned in the fire, the state does not issue commercial permits. People are allowed to forage on state lands for their personal use.
The Forest Service has no statistics about who the commercial pickers are, but their literature gives some idea of who may be doing the picking. Materials have been printed in Spanish, Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese and Hmong, in addition to English.
Just rumors, deputies say
Rumors have been circulating on social media and around town of criminal activity and improper trash disposal connected with the commercial harvesters, but Forest Service law enforcement staff and the Okanogan County Sheriff’s deputies both say they haven’t received any solid complaints.
The Forest Service has deployed an extra officer to supplement Law Enforcement Officer Dave Graves, said O’Brien. This past weekend, the officers encountered people with commercial permits picking outside the allowed area and seized several gallons of mushrooms and the pickers’ commercial permits, said O’Brien.
But officers found no problems with trash at the campgrounds, said O’Brien. She could not say if there had been any problem with garbage in the woods but said they had received no specific reports of problems.
The Okanogan County Sheriff’s Department has received several reports of problems involving mushroom pickers, including theft of their harvest at gunpoint. None of the reports has turned out to be anything more than rumors, according to Chief Criminal Deputy Steve Brown.
In one instance, a report was based on third-party statements and hearsay, with no details or names of victims, said Brown. When deputies followed up on another report of an attempted assault and theft of mushrooms, no one was there when they arrived, he said.
The Forest Service has provided designated camps with additional restrooms and trash facilities for commercial mushroom harvesters at the North Summit Sno-Park on the Loup and at the Black Canyon Sno-Park. Commercial harvesters wanting to camp on Forest Service land are required to use these areas.
The Forest Service encourages people to collect mushrooms in baskets so that the spores fall onto the ground, regenerating the fungi. People should also cut morels at the base, rather than pull the entire stalk out of the ground.
For more information about mushroom gathering and maps, call 996-4000, or search for the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest’s mushroom page online.
