Shrooming banned in Epping!!!!

[Red Kite]

Had a chat with one of the forest wardens today, and in passing he mentioned that they have now introduced a complete ban on the collection of fungi in the forest.

Not being a fungi picker myself, I'd only just found out that you needed a licence to collect in the forest.

The ban has been introduced as a result of people collecting on a commercial scale, and reselling the crop to markets and restaurants.

He also mentioned that due to staff cutbacks there are now fewer wardens than ever, and so I assume the chancess of being caught shroom rustling are pretty slim.

Where next?

Stewart

 

[spamel]

Maybe they should enforce a similar policy for idiots dumping rubbish in the woods! I found two old tents in my local woods today. Perhaps if more concern was shown towards fly tipping and dog poo (another absolute hate of mine) then the woods would be a nicer place to visit.

If I ever run for government, I will do away with the monetary fine for dog fouling. I will make the owner eat the faeces instead. A lesson will be learnt a lot more readily!

 

[sxmolloy]

:tongue-ti :yikes: :togo:

I will make the owner eat the faeces instead.

A few mushrooms and a little garlic, may not be so bad! :tongue-ti :sad6:

 

[falling rain]

Maybe they should enforce a similar policy for idiots dumping rubbish in the woods! I found two old tents in my local woods today. Perhaps if more concern was shown towards fly tipping and dog poo (another absolute hate of mine) then the woods would be a nicer place to visit.

If I ever run for government, I will do away with the monetary fine for dog fouling. I will make the owner eat the faeces instead. A lesson will be learnt a lot more readily!

Agreed. I saw this today in the paper. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7053375.stm and quite right too. except I say he should have got the jail as well. Maybe these harsher sentences will get the message across.
As it's now fasionable to pick mushrooms and other wild plants due to all the programmes like RM wild food - the wild gourmets - HFW etc, etc i fear there will increasingly be blanket bans on mushroom picking. It's the groups collecting on a commercial scale for profit that get the ban for everyone, not the single person gathering a few for his/her breakfast. And it'll only get worse with the eastern europeans and their love of wild mushrooms and all the new wild food type shows and fashion for organic foods and people collecting their own.

 

[xylaria]

I learned alot of my skills bunking school to go to Epping forest to pick mushrooms. Twenty years ago there was a by-law to prevent to removal or harm of any flora or fauna. I was under the impression that Epping being a royal hunting ground was never under common law so the right to forage was not there. I would pick away considering I could spend a whole day there without seeing anyone. That is very special if you live in london.

I hate commercial foragers, to me it is pimping Mother Nature to the idle rich. In other european countries I have less of a problem with the rural poor scratching some extra euros out of a plentiful harvest. The UK doesn't get plentiful harvests of fungi because the summers aren't warm enough. We are grossly over populated, have far fewer woods, and just don't have an environment that can support the whims of the idle rich. One look at the lifestyle supplements should how morally bankrupt the consumerist culture is when it comes to gorging on the worlds limited natural resources.

Hainualt is a better anyway. Dogs and thier poo is good for fungi, they disperse spore with their fur and add nitrogen. Humans starve nature by taking nutrients and never giving them back to land where we took them from.

 

[spamel]

I won't ever allow my rights to forage to be compromised by some idiots who probably wouldn't know a good shroom if it jumped up and hit them on the nose. I'll continue to forage when and where I can, stuff 'em.

What's the worst they realistically can do?

 

[xylaria]

I won't ever allow my rights to forage to be compromised by some idiots who probably wouldn't know a good shroom if it jumped up and hit them on the nose. I'll continue to forage when and where I can, stuff 'em.

What's the worst they realistically can do?

What insisting on common rights in a royal hunting forest, that be a dragging down whitehall by a mad goat, for such sedition.

It is slightly ironic that epping forest is ran the corporation of london, which also has the freehold to land city of london is built on. Its executive are just the type of people that can afford sit down to meal of wild food foraged from epping, cooked by a swearing spitting gorden ramsey. Funny how Mother Nature puts things in circles. I wonder if they swollow the line that the maggots in bottom of the soup is hegdehog fungus.