Mushroom foragers have reason to be secretive. Revealing the location of their best spots could mean those troves are picked clean before the next harvest.
What’s more, in Rhode Island, foraging for mushrooms on state land, where some of the best wild mushroom areas are, is banned.
Now one freshman Republican state lawmaker wants to knock down that legal hurdle to foraging — and has introduced a bill to legalize wild mushroom hunting for personal use in state parks.
“I have a constituent who is active in a little community group that goes and harvests on a regular basis and they asked if there is anything we can do with this law,” said David Place, R-Burrillville, sponsor of the foraging bill. “There is a movement towards local and self-sustaining food and it is a pretty simple fix.”
Place, who unseated former House Judiciary chairman Cale Keable in November, said the issue is particularly relevant in his rural district where about one-third of the land is state-owned.
He wouldn’t reveal the identities of the constituents who asked him to look into changing the law, out of fear they might draw the unwanted attention of park rangers.
If passed, Place’s bill would order the Department of Environmental Management to come up with regulations to “authorize any person to take mushrooms from any lands under the control of the director, provided such taking is for personal use only.” It does not apply to foraging wild foods other than mushrooms on state land.
The bill includes a clause to absolve the state of any legal liability “if you do something dumb and eat something you shouldn’t,” Place said.
Mushroom foraging in state parks is common and legal in many, if not most, parts of the country. The Pacific Northwest — Washington, Oregon and Alaska — all allow it with limits on the amount that can be taken. In California and Ohio, it’s allowed in some parks, but not others.
There is a movement to allow foraging in national parks.
Mushrooming was recently allowed in Massachusetts, where environmental regulations do not “prohibit the harvesting for personal consumption of edible wild fruits, berries, fungi, or nuts.”
That’s not the case in Rhode Island, where DEM regulations say “no person shall cut, remove or damage any tree, stone walls, natural element or feature, including but not limited to: fossils and minerals, shrub or vegetation except with official written permission, nor shall any person deface or alter any structure, sign, or other public property or improvements.”
Despite the ban, DEM spokesman Mike Healey said no one in the agency remembers busting anyone for mushroom-picking.
But that doesn’t mean Gov. Gina Raimondo’s administration is eager to legalize it.
“We oppose this bill because we believe it’s contrary to protecting our natural spaces,” Healey wrote in an email. “We share the ‘leave no trace’ ethics that began in the modern conservation movement in the 1960s and 1970s by government agencies like the National Park Service and nonprofits like the Sierra Club. For the most part, people don’t intend to harm nature but if everyone were allowed to just take what they wanted, we’d have lots of damaged habitats left behind.”
A hearing on Place’s bill is scheduled in the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee Thursday.
