ST PAUL, Minn. — If you're one to turn to state parks for edible plants, berries and mushrooms, you might already know that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is currently considering placing a cap on how much of that you can take home.
Right now, officials said they are toying around with the idea of one gallon per person, per day, per item. For example, one hiker can harvest up to one gallon of mushrooms, one gallon of berries and one gallon of wild asparagus each.
Foraging has always been a big part of Minnesota life, but it has only grown more popular during the pandemic. However, industry experts said they worry the new cap may dampen the hobby.
Jaime Rockney, who is the founder of Chick of the Woods Foraging, is out at least five days a week, foraging with people or by herself.
"It's hard to stop really; it's very addicting," Rockney said. "Especially once you find one, it just gives you all this energy to keep going."
Rockney said she's been foraging for 15 years and founded Chick of the Woods back in 2019.
"I'm a foraging educator so I teach people all about the things you can eat in the woods, and that's of course mushrooms, edible plants and berries," she said.
Currently, there are no rules when it comes to how much of your finds you can take home. If you hit a jackpot with a massive flush of mushrooms, you can take them all home — as many as you can carry.
But with the new proposed harvest limit of one gallon per person, per day, from the DNR, Rockney said those mushroom jackpot highs won't ever be the same.
"I mean, you could probably squeeze it into a gallon bag," Rockney said Monday of a chicken of the woods-variety mushroom she found in an undisclosed location. She asked us to keep the location private, as foragers like to keep their spots to themselves. She said she didn't end up harvesting the mushroom because it was too old by the time she got to it.
"But if you wanted to preserve it as it is in this state, I don't know if you can quite fit it into a gallon bag?" Rockney said, referring to the mushroom that was growing over 10 inches wide.
The rules also are difficult when it comes to different mushroom varieties.
"The morel mushroom is a hollow mushroom, so if you put a gallon of morels together you're not going to get a gallon of food," Rockney explained. "And mushrooms are 90% water. After you cook them down, it's way, way less than a gallon. But the purpose of foraging is to go out, and it's the anticipation of finding a big flush of mushrooms — and most foragers preserve their mushrooms. If you find a flush of them, most foragers take it, dry it, preserve it and use it all winter long."
"We're open to talking about what that might look like," Ed Quinn, the DNR's natural resource program supervisor for Division of Parks and Trails said. He added that the rules are far from being set and that the new rules are only in a draft phase.
"When was the last time you went and bought like, two gallons of blueberries?" he asked. "That's a lot of blueberries or mushrooms. So that's where we're kind of starting. We're just trying to find something that seems reasonable."
Plus, Quinn said, growing interest in foraging has been noticeable in state parks.
"If you have whole bunches of people going to the same dead elms that you can see off the trail, then you start to see all these unofficial trails, and so now we have to go in and try to restore that native plant community," Quinn said.
As with any rule revision, Quinn added that there will be a public comment period.
"We're in the process right now. We have a draft, and we're working with DNR leadership and the governor's office to schedule the timing of our tribal consultation and then our public comment period, so that's still to come," he said.
Quinn said they're hoping to have that public comment sometime this winter. He also said the rules revision wasn't an attempt to target foraging. The DNR is apparently reviewing its public land use rules for the first time in 30 years since a lot has changed in terms of recreation since then.
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