Oregon Dunes Mushrooms Are Off-Limits To The Pros

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Prodded by environmentalists and wary of pistol-packing mushroom pickers mixing with campers, rangers at the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area have banned commercial mushroom picking while officials study the situation.

Ed Becker, area ranger for the Oregon Dunes in Reedsport, said Monday he was concerned about recent reports of tense confrontations and even shootings involving commercial pickers in Eastern Oregon.

"Certainly when you have people threatening each other when they go on another person's mushroom plot, that is not conforming to the type of behavior we like to see at the recreation area," Becker said.

High prices for wild mushrooms have attracted hordes of commercial pickers to public lands throughout the Northwest in recent years, causing some scientists to wonder whether the intense harvest could threaten the health of the forest.

The Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area covers 32,000 acres along the coast from Florence to North Bend and draws 2 million visitors a year. While it is administered by the Siuslaw National Forest, it is managed to emphasize recreation, rather than timber production.

After the recreation area ranger decided to allow commercial mushroom harvests last year, the Oregon Natural Resources Council appealed.

The group questioned whether the Forest Service had looked closely at the potential for environmental harm from so many people picking mushrooms, as well as whether a commercial venture was appropriate in an area dedicated to recreation.

"What tipped us off to this was people calling our office saying, `We used to pick a few mushrooms for dinner,' but they couldn't do that any more because the commercial pickers had wreaked havoc on the area," council spokesman Jim Middaugh said from Portland.

The matsutake or pine mushroom grows in the recreation area and last year drew many commercial as well as recreational pickers, Becker said. The matsutake is the most valuable of the wild mushrooms, earning pickers as much as $50 a pound for top quality.

The matsutake is a mycorrhizal mushroom, meaning it grows in partnership with trees in a relationship that allows them both to live. The trees die without the underground networks of filaments gathering water and nutrients. Without the sugar derived from the trees, the mushrooms die.

Scientific evidence is thin, but it appears that raking and using leaf blowers to uncover the matsutake is harmful, said Mike Amaranthus, project leader for long-term ecosystem productivity for the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station.

However, other types of mushrooms, such as chanterelles, may actually benefit from picking, he added.

People picking mushrooms for fun can still do that if they pay $10 for a personal use permit. That allows them to take up to 2 gallons of matsutake and 7 gallons of other species.

The study puts the recreation area in the forefront of government efforts to cope with the rising interest in commercial mushroom picking. National forests are experimenting with regulations.

Becker said he hopes to have an environmental assessment done by late September.