Greedy Pickers Damaging Huckleberry Bushes Hacking Off Branches Hurts Next Year’s Crop And It’s Illegal
Hikers combing the mountains for huckleberries and beargrass are not treading lightly on Mother Nature this year.
The U.S. Forest Service has stumbled across messy campsites left by grass pickers and fielded complaints about people hacking branches off huckleberry bushes.
“People don’t realize they are damaging their favorite berry patch when they strip the leaves from the bush and break off branches,” said Kathy Thompson, a spokesman for the Clearwater National Forest. “This problem cropped up about three years ago and it’s happening again this year.”
Pickers anxious to fill buckets and backpacks with the tasty purple huckleberries don’t bother to pluck them one by one from the bush. Instead they strip the leaves along with the berries or cut off berry-loaded branches. The branches are hauled off and the berries gleaned from them later.
That method decreases future huckleberry production and it’s illegal.
“Most people don’t know they could be fined if caught doing it,” Thompson said. “Damaging any natural feature on a national forest, including berry bushes, is illegal.”
The fine ranges from $100 to $5,000. No one has been cited for ravaging a huckleberry bush this year, but Thompson said several hikers have called to report people clipping berry bushes.
The problem in the Sandpoint Ranger District isn’t ill-mannered berry hunters, but sloppy beargrass collectors. The grass, which sports a large white and yellow blossom at the top, has become a hot commercial item. Last year, about 200 people bought permits to pick the grass in the Sandpoint District alone, said Forest Service spokesman Terri VanGundy.
“It’s amazing. The market for it really caught us by surprise,” she said. “We have been hopping trying to monitor it.”
The grass pickers are charged $10 a day. They weave the grass into baskets and dry the flower tops for floral arrangements.
Most of the beargrass pickers are from the Tacoma and Seattle area. They come in groups and pitch makeshift camps for five days at a time to glean the grass from the mountainsides. But VanGundy said they are leaving litter and human waste behind.
“The mess they are leaving is starting to be a real problem and our enforcement officers have been busy,” she said.
It’s been difficult to explain proper camping etiquette to some groups because many of them don’t speak English. The Forest Service even had to order special permit forms in Vietnamese and Spanish for the pickers to fill out.
, DataTimes