Matsutake Mushroom Makes Waves

Permits Change Following Public Outcry

By Malcolm Terence, Two Rivers Tribune Contributing Writer

It was a great year for local harvesters of tanoak mushrooms in  terms of volume. Collectors reported that they are still finding them, a little weather beaten but sublimely edible, in higher elevations.

Many of the issues surrounding permits to collect the elusive mushrooms on National Forest ground remained unresolved. The Six Rivers National Forest levied a $200 per person permit for all collectors this fall, and the local communities responded with an angry and well-attended protest at the Orleans Ranger Station before Thanksgiving.

After the rally, Tyrone Kelley, forest supervisor for Six Rivers, made a modification that anyone 17 years old or younger could collect for free as long as they were accompanied by a parent or a legal guardian who had purchased a permit.

Many other issues were raised at the protest including the permit cost, the lack of protection for traditional tribal gathering areas, whether Karuk tribal members were exempt and the incentives for commercial gathering versus family gathering.

Julie Ranieri, the Six Rivers public affairs officer who years ago worked in Orleans, was present at the rally and took prolific notes of the complaints. She said the other issues would be considered by a Province Working Group when there is an updating of next year’s policy.

There was no shortage of discontent. Petitions were circulated in Orleans and Somes Bar and many signatures were delivered to Nolan Colegrove, the district ranger.

The petitions stated, “Personal-use permits for mushroom gathering used to be free, with a fee for a limited number of commercial permits available. The current fee structure encourages commercial harvesters, while discouraging personal use.”

Colegrove said Forest Service leadership was continuing the discussion with “hopes to have a policy that is more palatable for next season.”

One of the main collectors of petition signatures was Bari Talley of Orleans. She noted that her investigation revealed that there was a different policy in the neighboring Happy Camp ranger district. Talley said the fees there are $20 for a personal use permit and $200 for commercial use.

E-mails from the TRT to the Happy Camp District Ranger to confirm this discrepancy were not answered.

An e-mail to Ranieri, the Six Rivers spokesperson, about ongoing negotiations to exempt Karuk Tribal members from the permit requirements was also not answered.

Another critic of the $200 fee for personal use was Max Creasy, a Somes Bar resident and retired USFS ecologist. He is co-author of a 1996 scientific paper that examined the cultural patterns that surrounded the collection of the mushrooms, also called matsutakes, in Northern California and Southern Oregon.

Creasy says the solution is to establish a nominal or no-fee permit for non-commercial pickers.

He was also critical of a cheaper permit offered this year for matsutake collectors, $35 for five continuous days. Creasy said, “Obviously whoever wrote that reg has no clue of the vagaries of mushroom gathering. The whole thing…creates criminals out of good folks.”

The research in the scientific paper, which Creasy co-wrote with Rebecca T. Richards from the University of Montana, is still pertinent, even though it is 15 years old.   The North American or white matsutake (Tricholoma magnivelare) began to have great market value in Japan where it was sold as a substitute for the browner Japanese native species (Tricholoma matsutake).

There was so much demand in Japan that collection in Washington State in the late 1980s went from 2,600 pounds one year to over 100,000 the next. For generations before this, however, the mushroom had been picked in the Klamath region by Karuk, Yurok and Hupa people.

In Karuk language, it is called xayviish according to a spelling in the Karuk Dictionary by William Bright and Susan Gehr. The phonetic pronunciation for the xay- sound is like someone clearing their throat and the ii- sound is like the ‘e’ sound in machine but extended.

Creasy’s study, which focused on the Happy Camp district in Northern California and on the Illinois Valley district in Southern Oregon, said the other principal ethnicity involved in collection was people from Southeast Asia.

Many of them had been soldiers on the American side in the Vietnam War who spoke little English and had difficulty finding work here. They told field interviewers that they got bored sitting at home and had been active when they were soldiers or farmers.

Despite their pro-American roots, they were sometimes harassed in their encampments.

When the interviewers talked to Karuk elders, however, they said they only wanted to preserve traditional gathering and had no problem with Southeast Asian pickers working at the same time.

One Karuk elder told an interviewer that during the mining era in Happy Camp, “We always got along with the Chinese. We knew they were having a tough time, too.”

Other findings in the study suggested that the average Klamath region commercial picker made less than  $500 for the season and that experienced pickers do not necessarily harvest more mushrooms than inexperienced.

Creasy’s paper also notes that “Even today, the Karuk still respect the harvesting rights of various families to different mushroom ‘patches,’ remember the native Karuk word for matsutake and recall how to harvest and prepare it.”

Creasy said that sustainability was not an issue unless destructive raking of the leaf litter occurs. This may disrupt the subsurface beds of mycelia fungi which produce mushrooms as fruiting bodies. Many collectors, especially local ones, will toss overripe mushrooms downslope which may help disperse spores.

Lisa Hoover, a botanist from the Six Rivers National Forest who attended the November rally, said that careful picking did not reduce the harvest in future years anymore than careful picking of apples affected the health of the tree.
None of the collectors who praised the volume or sheer length of the mushroom harvest this year revealed where they had found them and none declared whether they had purchased a $200 permit. And none of the elders who received them as gifts asked.

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