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mjshroomer
Sage
Registered: 07/21/99
Posts: 13,774
Loc: gone with my shrooms
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Re: Proposed Community Project: Geographical Database [Re: ExplosiveMango]
#5454713 - 03/29/06 11:02 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Excuses meeee! Mr. Explosive Mango.
Not sure whetrher you are aware or not but it is even illegal in many communites to pick even edible mushrooms from public places (parks, etc) such as the law in California. I just posted that info here abot the recent shroom busts in San Francisco of edble shroom pickers beingf arrested for picking in public places. Posted her ein this very. Buit am reposting it here for you to read Me. Mango.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Police! Drop That Fungus!
Picking mushrooms in East Bay parks is a crime, but the chanterelle snatchers think that's ridiculous.
By Leonie Sherman
Article Published Mar 22, 2006
Mushroom harvesting East Bay Regional Parks District News Category: Business
They're out there carrying field guides and baskets, lurking in the parks and open land of the East Bay hills and flinching every time they hear a car roll by. They're poaching wild mushrooms from public land, and a crew of armed officers is hunting for them. The officers and their prey are locked in a thorny battle over the uses of public land and the environmental impacts of mushroom harvesting. The chanterelle pickers call their hobby a right; the officers who bust them call it a crime. Biologists tend to side with the thieves, but they're not making the rules. Meanwhile, rumors fly that the rangers hunt fungi themselves or eat the confiscated mushrooms back at the station, and law-abiding citizens wonder where they can gather wild food without risking a hefty fine. Where's a hungry, modern-day hunter-gatherer to turn for sustenance? Not the East Bay Hills, apparently. The East Bay Regional Parks District and East Bay Municipal Utility District each employ a phalanx of rangers whose duties include educating the public and protecting their respective agencies' lands, which together cover an area about one-fifth the size of Rhode Island. The rangers can call in mushroom offenses to the 72 gun-toting Park District officers, who are authorized to issue citations. "We know all the best spots from busting people," said utility district Ranger Naturalist Joe Scornaienchi. "It's just standard practice, you can't take any plants, animals or anything." The park cops take their responsibility seriously. "Looking for mushroom hunters is part of the routine patrol," said watch commander Lt. Wayne Morimoto. "We prioritize issues that relate to public safety or theft or vandalism." Mushroom hunters don't see their hobby like that. "All that land, East Bay MUD, East Bay Regional Parks, even UC Berkeley land, that's our land," said Charlie Hallowell, chef and owner of Oakland's Pizzaiolo restaurant. "That's public land, right? That's what I'm paying taxes for, right? Part of the natural bounty that exists here is these wonderful mushrooms. There's a reason they're so delicious. They want us to eat them!" Chanterelles are a standard topping on Hallowell's gourmet organic pizzas and he is an avid mushroom hunter. "It's horrible," agrees Mark Lockaby, two-time vice president and president of the Mycological Society of San Francisco, the country's largest collection of mushroom maniacs. "We're the laughing joke of the world. People have always foraged for food. Everywhere in the world people do this, most places in the country too. California is the only place in the country with such strict regulations. Some Scandinavian countries allow you to hunt for mushrooms and berries on all lands, public and private. It's actually a constitutional right." The Alaska state constitution guarantees subsistence rights on all public land ? state residents can catch fish, hunt game, pick berries, and look for wild mushrooms ? but there are no such rights here. Although enforcement is executed by just one agency, East Bay Regional Parks District land ranges over twelve different court jurisdictions, and the amount of the fine is at the discretion of individual judges. The most lenient have been known to drop all charges, while the strictest have upheld fines as stiff as $675. Mike Boom, another former president of the Mycological Society, thinks there's additional danger in these regulations. "If there are laws people think are ridiculous, then they start disrespecting other laws as well," he notes. In the early 1990s, the Mycological Society staged a rebellion, appealing to state parks officials to allow some mushroom hunting, or to open up other land to the activity. The society achieved a small victory with the decision to allow mushroom hunting up to five pounds per person per day in three California State Parks. Two are in Marin County ? Samuel P. Taylor and Tomales Bay State Parks ? and the third is Salt Point State Park in Mendocino County. National Forests, where permits are free, are the state's best bets for mushroom gathering. However, desperate urban foragers have been known to turn to city parks, median strips, and other city land where there are no official regulations yet. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2006-03-22/news/cityside.html
East bay Express, Saturday March 23, 2006
Itr is illegal in most public parks to puick flowers, fruits, berries and mushrooms, and that includes edible shrooms.
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auweia
mountain biking


Registered: 12/03/05
Posts: 2,725
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Re: Proposed Community Project: Geographical Database [Re: mjshroomer]
#5454912 - 03/29/06 11:57 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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MJ is right about this, and here's another article from Southern Califonia of people getting bustyed for pickin chanterelles on privat property, and, the had GPS satellite devices with them to record where their spots were >>>
direct link > http://www.thedesertsun.com/apps/pbcs.dl...mplate=printart
There's an (expensive) fungus among us Mushroom trade grows in dark places along Central Coast
An open box of chanterelle mushrooms (right) is seen at the Wholesale Produce Market in downtown Los Angeles. The relative rarity, combined with Americans' increasing interest in fine cuisine in general and mushrooms in particular, makes chanterelles a valuable commodity for the Central Coast ranchers who find them growing at the base of trees and other locations on their land.
Nick Ut, The Associated Press An open box of chanterelle mushrooms (right) is seen at the Wholesale Produce Market in downtown Los Angeles. The relative rarity, combined with Americans' increasing interest in fine cuisine in general and mushrooms in particular, makes chanterelles a valuable commodity for the Central Coast ranchers who find them growing at the base of trees and other locations on their land.
Jacob Adelman The Associated Press March 26, 2006 LOS ANGELES - Doug Stenger pulled the lid from a small cardboard box of chanterelle mushrooms in the chilly storage room of a shop at the Wholesale Produce Market on the edge of downtown.
Inside was a jumble of the knotted, fleshy lumps that command nearly $20 a pound from restaurants and upscale markets this time of year.
"Of all the exotic wild mushrooms, these are probably the ones people want the most," said Stenger, an employee at produce wholesaler Davalan Sales.
Growers have found ways to cultivate some popular wild mushrooms such as morels and hen-of-the-woods. But not chanterelles. The fungus favored by gastronomes for its meaty texture and fruity flavor only grows in the wild, and at certain times of the year.
The rarity - combined with Americans' increasing interest in fine cuisine in general and exotic mushrooms in particular - makes chanterelles a valuable commodity for the Central Coast ranchers who find them growing at the base of oak trees.
But the enterprise has also caught the eye of an unusual breed of rustlers who target the mushrooms on midnight missions and sometimes use high-tech devices to keep track of their whereabouts.
"It's been a big issue," Santa Barbara County sheriff's Lt. George Gingras said. "Some of those ranchers and farmers count on those chanterelles as a source of income."
In February, three men were arrested near Lompoc for investigation of trespassing on private land to pick mushrooms.
Deputies seized several thousand dollars worth of chanterelles from a hotel room where some of the men were staying, Gingras said. Ledgers detailing more than $10,000 in sales of mushrooms were found in the car of one suspect, according to a sheriff's report.
Officials believe the men, based in the Pacific Northwest, used global positioning devices to record locations of chanterelle patches.
"They'd make a harvest, click in the GPS coordinates, and then they'd come back next year," Gingras said.
Ranchers told authorities they had seen the men each year between November and April, when damp, woody areas were bursting with chanterelles.
Mushroom theft in the United States is rare but not unheard of. A group of pickers in Oregon were fined in 2002 for foraging on U.S. Forest Service property without a permit.
Pickers have also been busted for possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms harvested from farms and ranches in Louisiana and Florida.
The men arrested in Santa Barbara County are scheduled to be arraigned on March 28 on charges of theft and trespassing. They are suspected of hitting ranches and forests along the West Coast, moving north to Oregon and Washington in the spring when mushrooms fruit there, Gingras said.
Bill Giorgi, a cattle rancher in Buellton, said chanterelles are plentiful on his property. Yet he didn't realize the value until pickers first invaded his ranch in the 1980s. He's been picking and selling the mushrooms ever since.
He even has deals with his neighbors to harvest chanterelles on their farms and share the profits.
Sales of chanterelles and other wild mushrooms are not tracked by the much larger cultivated mushroom industry. But the demand for cultivated specialty varieties such as shiitake and oyster mushrooms jumped more than 26 percent, to more than 15 million pounds a year, between 2002 and 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"Anything with a mushroom sells," said chef Brett Macras, who keeps in-season chanterelles on the menu at Campanile, a popular Los Angeles restaurant. "Our customers are always looking for something new."
Macras usually buys his chanterelles from a mushroom broker but sometimes goes directly to an elderly man in Santa Barbara County he calls "The Mushroom Hunter." The chef has paid as much as $16 for a pound of the mushrooms.
Mushroom brokers who serve produce wholesalers and restaurants pay Giorgi about $5 a pound for his chanterelles.
That figure might seem low, considering the mushrooms can retail for more than four times that amount. But Giorgi doesn't invest any time or labor to grow the crop, and experts say it's not unusual in some years to find 10 pounds of chanterelles under a single oak.
Giorgi won't say where the mushrooms grow or who buys from him. He said it's information that could help p
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auweia
mountain biking


Registered: 12/03/05
Posts: 2,725
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Re: Proposed Community Project: Geographical Database [Re: auweia]
#5454926 - 03/29/06 12:02 PM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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sorry, the last sentince got cut out > Giorgi won't say where the mushrooms grow or who buys from him. He said it's information that could help poachers find his mushroom patches.
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ExplosiveMango
HallucinogenusDigitallus


Registered: 07/12/05
Posts: 3,222
Last seen: 14 years, 2 months
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Re: Proposed Community Project: Geographical Database [Re: shroominDole]
#5458256 - 03/30/06 05:22 AM (17 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
shroominDole said:
Quote:
Mushrooms growing on the ground are not illegal.
.....but the chemicals in them are.....and once they are no longer ON the ground but ON you.....possession.....and its now illegal to posess spores of these mushrooms in several states(including Calif.) despite no regulated chemicals present inside.....
Quote:
They are just mushrooms growing on the ground.
....tell it to the judge.....
You don't get it man. The database would not FORCE YOU to break the law... Who are the chemicals in the mushrooms illegal to before they're picked? The ground? Are the cops going to arrest the ground?
This project is about establishing a strong (well, an even stronger) information backbone about something we should have every right to know about. It's amazing how many people let their fear get in the way of progress...
In my view if this became an issue with 'the cops' it would be a good thing... another chance to let an ignorant society learn how it really is, maybe even start down the road to correcting their unjust laws...
-------------------- Know your self. Know your substance. Know your source. The most distorted perspective possible is the perspective that yours is not distorted.
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