If walkers pick up a few porcini mushrooms for their evening meal in the autumn, nobody has anything against it. Organized picking squads taking tons of mushrooms to sell is something else entirely. The forest is being damaged, say the owners.
Dusseldorf (dpa / lnw) – The Forest Farmers’ Association of North Rhine-Westphalia complains about commercial mushroom picking teams who get the expensive mushrooms by the kilo or even hundredweight from the forest. The association, which sees itself as a mouthpiece for around 150,000 private forest owners in North Rhine-Westphalia, criticized that the professional collectors came with headlamps, whistles, radios for communicating with one another and huge baskets. “During individual police actions, tons of porcini mushrooms have been seized from large, well-organized groups of collectors.”
Small amounts of wild mushrooms may be taken into Germany for personal use. In practice, the authorities assume two kilograms per collector and day, which is quite a lot, according to the association. But the collection teams went far beyond that. It’s about money for them – porcini mushrooms cost well over 100 euros per kilogram in stores.
When he protested, he was insulted, reported one of the affected forest owners, Karl-Josef Frielinghausen. Mushroom pickers trampled down a fence in a newly reforested forest area. The forest owners complain that new plantings are being damaged by the area-wide collection of mushrooms and the wild animals are worried. “A concerted action by all law enforcement officers from the police, municipalities and the state forest and wood company could help,” said the association’s chairman, Philipp Freiherr Heereman.
