Forest Braces for Big Crop of Morels

By French, Brett

Gallatin National Forest lands charred by last summer’s wildfires could yield a crop of highly valued morel mushrooms … or they could not.

Either way, forest officials are prepared.

“It’s kind of a big unknown for us,” said Bill Avey, Big Timber district ranger. “We just don’t know what to expect.”

Black and gray morels, which can fetch commercial pickers anywhere from $5 to $30 a pound, are fire-activated, sprouting in the wake of wildfires. Because they’re a cash crop, commercial pickers will swarm to recently burned areas in search of the fungi.

“What the Forest Service prepares for is the influx of people coming into one area at one time,” said Stacie DeWolf, of the Forest Service’s Northern Region in Missoula.

In 2001, after fires on the Bitterroot and Flathead national forest, the northwestern comer of the state dealt with a bumper crop of morels that attracted an estimated 1,700 pickers and created about $45,000 in morel sales each day, DeWolf said.

The likelihood of a similar scenario playing out on the Gallatin is unknown, but officials are getting ready just in case.

Fire morels tend to be associated with lodgepole pine and spruce forests at higher elevations. Of the 55,000 acres of Gallatin National Forest burned in the Derby Mountain fire last summer, much of it is lower in elevation and features ponderosa and jack pine. Therefore, it may not be as morelfriendly.

If there is a morel crop, however, Gallatin officials are prepared. Parts of three fire areas – the jungle, Passage Falls and Big Creek fires – that are outside the wilderness will be designated for noncommercial morel pickers. Much of the Gallatin National Forest lands burned by the Derby fire in the Ironwood Mountain/ Lower Deer Creek area will be set aside for commercial pickers.

“We tried to provide access to what would possibly be mushroom habitat and that didn’t line commercial pickers up against private- property boundaries,” Avey said.

Should commercial interest pick up, forest officials will respond with increased enforcement and sanitation efforts.

“Problems tend to be more social than criminal.” DeWolf said. “The thing of greatest concern to the Forest Service is sanitation.”

Portable toilets and trash bins have to be set up for commercial pickers’ camps, and they have to be emptied.

Rumors of armed pickers threatening others harvesters are largely overblwon, DeWolf said.

“Morel mushroom pickers have gotten a bad rap,” she said. “People think there are guns and drugs. But there certainly aren’t the mushroom wars people talk about.”

Rebecca McLain, who coauthored a study on mushroom picking in the Bitterroot, said such fears were “totally exaggerated.” McLain also worked as a mushroom buyer in Oregon for two seasons.

“I never had anything stolen, and I carried thousands of dollars,” she said. “I felt totally safe as a buyer.”

But DeWolf said the commercial pickers’ appearance can be jarring to some forest visitors.

“Their appearance, at first, is like anyone who’s lived in the woods for six weeks,” she said. And working in sooty fires all day doesn’t help. “They look a little bit foreign to us, it’s a little intimidating that way. And a lot of the commercial pickers are ethnic groups.

“But they’re really terrific people for the most part.”

Copyright Billings Gazette Apr 11, 2007

(c) 2007 Billings Gazette, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.