By Des Campbell. Mar. 20, 2015. Updated by Lauren Church. July 26, 2018. Timber is usually the first product that comes to mind when we think of big business in forests. It’s impossible to drive along a freeway in the Pacific Northwest without passing huge lumber trucks on their way to shipping ports. But timber is only one of the commercial products the U.S. Forest Service sells.
Huckleberries: one of the Pacific Northwest forest’s most popular products.
Depending on the forest, permits may be available to gather, harvest, or collect a wide variety of things that grow in the forests. A page on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest’s website explains what items require a permit: mushrooms, poles, boughs, salal, firewood, transplants, beargrass, and berries. Along the Gorge, berries to most people mean huckleberries.
Commercial huckleberry picking revolves around the same thing all businesses do: money. When that’s the bottom line, it’s understandable why the permitting of commercial huckleberry picking upsets pickers and buyers alike. Permitting limits their season and the amount they can harvest.
The Forest Service requires permits for everyone who wants to harvest huckleberries, whether or not it’s for profit, in order to ensure sustainable huckleberry populations. A permit for personal picking is free and limits an individual’s harvest to one gallon of berries per day and a maximum of three gallons a year. Berries picked with such a permit are prohibited from being sold or bartered. A “Charge Use” (commercial) permit is required for anyone who plans to sell berries–or products made from them–or plans to pick beyond the restrictions of a personal permit.
Buyers are required to check and record permit numbers of sellers when they purchase berries from them and can only purchase between certain dates. One buyer complained, “Putting a season on the picking really hurts the business, because they are ripe when they are ripe. Some people from California came up [and] could only work for eight days. It was a waste of a trip.”
The average cost to consumers is around $38 per gallon. A 14 day commercial permit on the Gifford Pinchot costs $40 and allows pickers to harvest 40 gallons. An entire season permit costs $75 and allows pickers to harvest 75 gallons. In contrast, the Mt. Hood National Forest doesn’t offer commercial permits for picking huckleberrry. Because permits, fees and regulations vary from forest to forest and district to district, it?s important to check details before heading out to pick.
The Forest Service attempts to control the number of berries leaving the forest by: requiring permits, limiting the commercial picking season, and designating “no-pick” areas, which are to respect tribal obligations and also prevent confrontation between commercial and personal-use pickers. This regulates the amount of berries being taken from the forest.
Well, not exactly.
Although the commercial picking season doesn’t start until early-August, personal use pickers can harvest as soon as they find berries. And there have been reports of commercial pickers harvesting ouside the designated locations. One complaint about commercial pickers is use of illegal instruments to rake berries from huckleberry bushes, which damages the plants and allows mass stripping of berries from bushes in entire areas. But according to the forest service, heavy picking is not that big of a problem, because huckleberries have root systems with rhizomes that stem into new plants wherever they reach.
Rangers and hikers regularly find illegal campsites.
The Forest Service believes the biggest concern with huckleberry harvesting is, as one forester said, “A lot of the commercial pickers stay and camp. The big problem is the litter and the human waste.” They often pitch tents in areas that are strictly for day use.
Rangers and hikers regularly report finding day-use picnic sites littered with old tarps, broken glass, toilet paper, and food wrappers. Sometimes they discover the remnants of a recent campfire during seasons when igniting anything is prohibited due to high forest-fire risk.
The Forest Service cracked down about ten years ago with fines against these illegal, yet common, actions. Unfortunately, there is too much forest to cover and not enough funding to pay dozens of rangers to patrol there. Trying to proactively solve the problem, the U.S. Forest Service provides human waste pack-out bags and trash bags for free at Ranger Centers.
