ABOUT FORAGING ETHICS & ECOLOGY
Foraging is currently illegal on almost all public lands!
I seek to show modern people the myriad practical uses of wild plants, animals, and minerals in order to give value to undeveloped land.
Hunting and recreational uses of land, such as bird watching, camping or ecotourism, are the main drivers of land conservation in North America and globally (Di Minin et al. 2016, Loveridge et al. 2009, Paulson 2012, Serfass et al. 2018, Stronza et al. 2019).
Foraging can give value to the more commonplace public wildlands that may motivate their conservation. Nature should be valued for more than stunning scenery, camping, or hunting.
General foraging ethics guidelines I follow:
1) Do not harvest more than you need for yourself and family to eat.
2) Do not waste if avoidable.
3) Always leave plenty of fruits, seeds, and other resources for wildlife.
4) Do not take more than about 10% of what’s available from a particular plant / area.
5) Do not harvest any parts that will kill the plant if the species is not common in the area. This requires one to be aware of the population health of the species you are gathering.
6) Do not harvest from a plant or area too frequently. Allow time for regeneration and for others to forage, applying these guidelines every season / year.
7) If you can assist in the dispersal or health of a native plant, do so when possible.
8) Always give thanks / leave an offering. It fosters an attitude of appreciation instead of exploitation, leading to conscious and unconscious valuation of the plant.
General warnings:
If you are not 100% sure of a species’ identification is, do not harvest it. It may be a deadly lookalike or a rare relative. I do not recommend practicing anything in this text.
These are the other considerations I keep in mind when foraging:
Be aware of to what pollutants the plant has been exposed. Pollution is rampant in our world. Even in remote areas, pesticides may have been used, or there may be soil contamination. For example, cities are known to inject glyphosate (round-up) into the stumps of trees cut down for invasive species control, which can pollute surrounding areas. Some National Forests are sprayed with chemicals by plane. And even your back yard may have lots of old trash buried that leach chemicals the plants absorb. Roadside plants are exposed to exhaust and dusts that may be harmful. Trailside plants may have excretions of humans or pets. And even wildlife can harbor diseases that transfer to humans via plants they excrete upon, if the plant isn’t washed.
That said, what many plants that produce foods found on grocery store shelves are exposed to is often appalling.
American Indian ethnoecology:
When the first settlers came to North America, they were not encountering raw untouched wilderness (Anderson 2005). They were seeing ecosystems that had been carefully and wisely managed by Indians for thousands of years (Anderson 2005).
Through burning, weeding, pruning, thinning, digging, coppicing, harrowing, sowing, and selectively harvesting, Indians altered the structure and composition of the plant community to maximize harvests for food, basketry, and construction materials (Anderson 2005). These ecosystem management practices are also well-known for maximizing harvests of animal resources (Anderson 2005, Francis 2008). For example, low-level burning increases the fresh green forage for deer while minimizing their brush cover for hunting (Anderson 2005). Burning was also instrumental among many California and Southwest Indians for gathering important grasshopper food stores (Harp 2014a, Harp 2014b).
Perhaps concepts from these ancient ecosystem management systems can be integrated into our modern environment.
References:
Anderson, Kat M. 2005. Tending the wild: Native American knowledge and the management of California’s natural resources. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Di Minin, Enrico, Leader-Williams, Nigel, and Corey J. A. Bradshaw. 2016. Banning trophy hunting will exacerbate biodiversity loss. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 31(2):99-102.
Francis, James Eric Sr. 2008. Burnt Harvest: Penobscot people and fire. Maine History 44(1):4-18.
Harp, Cyrus. 2014a. Edible insect use by California Indians. Society of Ethnobiology and Society of Economic Botany joint annual conference. Cherokee, North Carolina. May 14. Poster presentation.
Harp, Cyrus. 2014b. Insect foods of the California Indians. Guest lecture for Insects in Human Society (undergraduate course, prof. Kip Will). UC Berkeley, California. Nov. 11. Hour-long oral presentation.
Loveridge, Andrew J., Reynolds, Jonathan C., and E. J. Milner-Gulland. 2009. Does sport hunting benefit conservation? In Key Topics in Conservation Biology, Macdonald, David, and Katrina Service (eds.). Blackwell Publishing, Malden MA.
Paulson, Nels. 2012. The place of hunters in global conservation advocacy. Conservation & Society 10, (1):53-62.
Serfass, Thomas L., Brooks, Robert P., and Jeremy T. Bruskotter. 2018. North American model of wildlife conservation: empowerment and exclusivity hinder advances in wildlife conservation. Canadian Wildlife Biology & Management 7(2):101-18.
Stronza, Amanda L., Hunt, Carter A., and Lee A. Fitzgerald. 2019. Ecotourism for Conservation? Annual Review of Environment and Resources 44:229-53