Mushroom Rustling -- Heated Races For This Lowly Fungi Lead To Regulation

Wild-mushroom rustling might seem an esoteric subject for discussion. Recent events indicate that it might not be so rarefied an activity.

Wild-mushroom picking is a business based on theft. Most of the time the landowner - whether of public or private lands - doesn't know that mushrooms are being gathered.

As more pickers head into the woods, the problem also becomes a territorial one. Favorite patches become jealously guarded private turf, despite the fact the pickers do not own the land.

Confrontations occur all along the West Coast, from California to Alaska. In Oregon last fall there were reports of pickers carrying handguns and knives - to protect themselves from other pickers out to establish their territorial rights. Some forest rangers now wear flak jackets and travel in pairs through mushroom country. In California, picking in some forests is banned outright because of the increasing problems.

In Washington, one "recreational" picker testified in a state hearing that she was confronted by rake-waving men who told her to get out and not come back. Canadian Mounties in northern British Columbia tell of handguns and threats. One picker in the far north, who had been drinking while rustling, went after a mushroom buyer with a rifle. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the confrontation points to a growing problem that is being felt throughout the region.

In Washington, the state Department of Agriculture, which oversees the commercial harvesting of mushrooms, will issue uniforms and bullet-proof vests to its field monitors to protect them from potential danger.

And all for a lowly fungus.

Until the past decade, harvesting wild mushrooms was a little-practiced, if quixotic, activity. Aficionados tramped into the woods to gather enough for that night's stew. For most other people, mushrooms were merely a curiosity in the produce department or, better yet, they came in a can.

Then wild mushrooms were discovered, and the stampede was on. Mushrooms became a commercial commodity. American chanterelles headed to Europe - Germany, mostly - and our variant of the matsutake, the pine mushroom, began commanding top yen in Japan. It didn't take long for people looking for alternative sources of income to become foragers for profit.

Several hundred tons of chanterelles are shipped through Canada to Europe at a wholesale value of $2.50 to $3 a pound. A smaller but more valuable tonnage is the matsutake, averaging $14 a pound. The latter wind up in Japan costing the yen equivalent of up to $128 a pound. There are unconfirmed reports of one slice of the mushroom going for $9 in trendy Tokyo restaurants! It doesn't take many reports like that to lure pickers into the woods.

Both Europeans and Asians have greater traditions for including wild mushrooms in their diets. Some say the reason foreign buyers are importing from America is that they have serious shortages from an overpicking that may have damaged the harvests in both Europe and Japan.

Estimates vary on the total value of Washington exports. The Department of Agriculture says $652,000 was reported in 1989. Others familiar with the market guess it is 10 times that amount, and $6 million a year may be a conservative guess. Americans might be startled at those dollar amounts; mushrooms are not yet their dish. Without our being aware of it, fungi are already big business, with control and regulation lagging far behind.

Only a few individuals choose to make their livelihood in the woods, because they enjoy it and the woods are where they most like to be. Hoquiam's Orville Johnson, a "brush picker," is typical of the breed: For 27 years he's been collecting for sale shrubs, ferns and bark. In season, he includes mushrooms in his harvest. He's not now the solitary operator he once was. He's become the U.S. organizer for a German exporting firm, setting up buying stations in Washington and Oregon.

The gatherers who sell their harvest to the buyers and dealers display varied histories. There's the displaced logger or fisherman trying to pick up a little cash to make ends meet. A person on welfare or a retired pensioner might have the same goal. There's the individualist with the alternative lifestyle who likes the freedom of not being tied to a formal job. Some Asian immigrants take to the woods as families or in groups: Mushrooms are something they know from the old countries, and a command of English is not required. In the Grays Harbor area, where 90 percent of Washington's licensed mushroom production is located, the majority of pickers are Southeast Asian.

Some pickers are padding their incomes by $3,000 to $5,000 a year. Those who put in a little more effort, following the seasons with the different species of mushrooms, could collect $20,000 a year. With real organization, $50,000 is not unknown.

As such profits suggest, mushrooms are not your typical seed-sprout-stalk-fruit phenomenon.

A mushroom plant is a connection of fine threads that join together, expand and grow to form a threadlike network under the ground. Some mushrooms live on dead material such as fallen leaves, bark, roots and even insects. Other species, such as chanterelle and matsutake, attach themselves to the rootlets of trees. The tree picks up moisture and nutrients from the network, and in return sends back sugars, which nourish the mushroom.

It is a sensitive process and is easily disturbed, especially when an area is raked, as reported at various spots along the coast. Commercial buyers say it doesn't happen often, because the mushrooms get too mangled and dirty, but reports persist.

An article in a Los Angeles Japanese newspaper detailed a scene last fall just south of Mount St. Helens. It told of a buying syndicate busing in loads of transients to comb the forest for matsutake. The digging was described as enthusiastic, after which the area looked as if a tractor had plowed through it.

Not surprisingly, such reports have prompted action by lawmakers, who began regulating mushroom collection in 1989. Since transactions at the buying stations are in cash, income taxes are no problem. It's free money.

The rub for the picker comes with finding product. A patch might be a great source one day, but a return might find competitors on hand. Both parties might consider the other as interlopers. Even if it doesn't result in conflict, there's a good chance a race may be on.

The sudden growth of the commercial wild-mushroom market has also caused competition between commercial and recreational pickers. Commercial pickers who harvest during the week tend to clean out recreational pickers' favorites patches by the weekend.

Further, old hands have begun to notice a diminishing crop from year to year. A patch that had offered a great bounty might within a few years display only holes in the ground.

The apparent drop in fruiting of once-abundant fields, and alarm over possible confrontations caused members of mycological societies to push for regulation. They saw the problem as a systematic rape of the forest - a commercial vacuuming of the forest floors. Goals included legislation that would require licensing of the commercial buying and selling of fungi, and establish the size of the harvest taken from the woods. The last would aid research to determine the effect widespread picking might have on the health of the crops.

A leader in the movement was Margaret Dilly, a past president of the Puget Sound Mycological Society and longtime chairman of its Conservation and Ecology Committee. A very determined lady, Dilly joined with members of other societies, commercial pickers and buyers, foresters and representatives of the State Department of Natural Resources to hammer out a solution on licensing and/or regulation. Mostly they had to determine how to write a law that could be reasonably enforced. Patrolling the woods wouldn't make it. How do you distinguish someone who's picking for profit from one who's not? Licensing everyone, both commercial and amateur, would be chaotic.

Dilly and other amateur mycologists also raised the question of remuneration to landowners. "I think it's important that anyone owning a piece of land has control over what's gathered off of that land, whether they want to give it away or whether they want to sell it. If it's going to be a viable industry, then the landowner has a right to decide."

A few large landowners do charge a fee, and permits are required on some federal lands, but the income is small and probably does not warrant the effort.

When all parties wrestling over the proposed law could not agree on a solution, the mushroom recreationalists took their own proposal directly to the legislature.

Called the Wild Mushroom Harvesting Act, the law concentrates on the points where the mushrooms are funneled to the buyer. Such points are easy to spot: a small rural store, a pickup truck parked at a convenient junction on the highway with a spray-painted plywood sign that says "Mushrooms", or a newspaper ad with a telephone number or address. The buyers at these points become the licensees, required to record how much is gathered, where and when. The records are regularly submitted to the state. An accumulated history of harvest sizes and the source areas provide a basis for decisions on the shape of further regulation.

The law is not universally popular. Commercial pickers see it as an attempt by "elitist" recreational gatherers to protect traditional patches. Recreational pickers don't think it's protective enough. And the Agriculture Department sees it as just another crop that requires regulation. For George Boozer, the man who implements the department's regulations, the law creates just one more chore, and a niggling one at that. "I hate mushrooms," he says.

AL STENSON IS A FREELANCE WRITER LIVING ON MERCER ISLAND. JAMES MCFARLANE IS A SEATTLE TIMES NEWS ARTIST.