Collecting wild plants for food, medicine is a tradition for many Minnesotans, but laws are unclear

State Sen. Susan Pha, DFL-Brooklyn Park, has been gathering plants like Solomon's seal, fiddlehead fern and stinging nettle for years.

It's a tradition she learned from her parents and one she's passed to her children. And like many in Minnesota, for a long time she didn't realize gathering plants is legal in some areas and restricted in others.

''You know that you're taking what you need from the earth, and you're enjoying that. But at the same time you feel like you're doing something wrong,'' she said.

She was speaking at the October meeting of the Sustainable Foraging Task Force, which she chairs and helped create through legislation.

In over 20 hours of public meetings since August, speakers have reiterated that foraging is a way humans have gathered food for thousands of years.

Today, the practice holds significance for many people, across cultures. And the potential for state-level changes has revived calls to ensure people have access to foraged foods.

Like other lawmakers, Pha got involved with creating a task force after advocates contacted her in 2023 with concerns about potential Department of Natural Resources (DNR) restrictions on mushroom foraging.

Pha said community members wanted clarity on whether they could legally gather Solomon's seal and fiddlehead fern in state parks. When she asked the DNR to clarify, it led to a permit fee.

She said that's what her constituents feared, and why some didn't want her to contact the state in the first place. The plants they gather are not only helpful for reducing inflammation, but traditionally gathered by Hmong and other East Asian communities.

''I said to the DNR, that really eroded trust with our community,'' Pha said later in an interview.

Where is foraging OK in Minnesota? It's complicated

In February, Assistant DNR Commissioner Bob Meier told lawmakers about large groups of people, as many as 80 to 100, coming to a single park to forage.

Concerns like those renewed a broader debate about the public's ability to gather foods and medicinal plants that grow abundantly on state lands.

To name a few: acorns, blueberries, burdock, choke cherries, chicken of the woods, dandelions, morels, ramps, wild asparagus, wood sorrel and more.

Unless otherwise stated, Minnesota law says people can't ''disturb, destroy, injure, damage, deface, molest, or remove any state property.''

And that ''state property'' includes plants.

There are caveats. ''Fruiting bodies'' like mushrooms and berries are fair game to gather in state parks and forests, assuming it's for ''personal use.'' That term has no strict definition.

The DNR charges at least $25 per plant species, permits for which must be purchased in-person.

Plus, the rules are entirely different for city, county and tribal lands — which the task force isn't focused on. But it's still relevant given many local park systems (including Minneapolis') also prohibit plant foraging, and less-restrictive state forests aren't close to the cities.

There's ‘no smoking gun' for over-foraging

Since meetings began in August, the task force has discussed nuances like where you can forage, for how much, and who gets to decide.

But it's clear the task force is trying to answer whether there's evidence the land is being harmed as the result of an increase in foraging, whether from tour groups, commercial sales or simple public interest.

''There's just not a lot of data or research regarding foraging or harvesting on our state lands, whether it has a positive or negative impact,'' Pha said.

She said there are a handful of cases showing people have foraged in large quantities for commercial use, but those are rare.

Task force member Peter Martignacco, president of the Minnesota Mycological Society, put it this way: ''There's been no smoking gun that says, ‘Hey, here's what we've gotta watch out for.'''

JJ Williams, a parks manager with Washington County Parks, said foraging is a known activity that both holds meaning for the public and has been happening illegally in the park system.

Last year, the county created a free permit system to allow it. So far, it's issued 55 permits for a park system that sees 1.9 million visitors yearly, Williams said in the November task force meeting.

It's gathered based on Indigenous knowledge: only after the plant has seeded, ensuring the seeds spread after the turnips are picked, with no over-harvesting in a single area. Foragers spend no more than four years in one area, he said.

''And this is just traditional ecological knowledge that has been with our people for millennia,'' Harrington said at the October meeting.

Deeply rooted biases

For some, the idea that foraging could be harming the land is laughable.

Samuel Thayer, a forager and author on the subject, told the task force in October that a few highly publicized cases ''have people fearful that foraging in general is destroying the landscape.''

In an interview, Thayer said he was referencing the general over-harvest of wild ginseng, goldenseal and ramps. Those issues are unique to commercial foraging and have been applied broadly to people who forage for personal use, he said.

(Media coverage, which surged after the 2008 recession and again with COVID-19, hasn't helped. The portrayal of foraging in the news as subsistence practice or luxury fad has even been studied in academia ).

Those fears reinforced a preexisting bias, Thayer said. That's what he suggested in his task force testimony when quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote in 1871 that ''the first farmer was the first man.''

In other words, the first man did not hunt, fish or gather.

He's not alone. A widely cited journal article details a long history of restrictions on foraging by the U.S. government, beginning with its treatment of Indigenous peoples during colonization and later with trespassing laws after the Civil War that targeted African Americans, among other examples.

France, for example, trains its pharmacists in mushroom identification, recognizing both their medicinal values and potential for poison. Sweden embraces ''allemansrätten,'' or the Right of Public Access to land.

''Pick berries, mushrooms and flowers from the ground — all completely free of charge,'' reads the country's official tourism webpage. ''The only thing you have to pay, is respect for nature and the animals living there.''

Among the task force members is Nibi Ogichidaa Ikwe, who was appointed by the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council as an Ojibwe representative. At the November meeting, she referenced a need to uphold tribal sovereignty and treaty rights.

''Many have also asked if we would please consider allowing space for tribal members only, because our way of life depends on these traditional medicines,'' she said, mentioning kinnickinick and dogwood.

Ikwe said it's important to educate the broader public about that topic itself.

To exercise treaty rights, you have to be enrolled in a tribe — which many Indigenous people are not.

''I'm just asking for education so that those medicines remain there, as a gift from our Creator, forever, for the next seven generations,'' she said.

As always, there's more nuance to consider

For one, part of the DNR's job is to manage the needs of specific plant species, like ones that are invasive, endangered or highly sought-after. It's why permits exist already for certain species, like wild rice and ginseng.

And as general interest in foraging rises — like on social media — there's a potential for inexperienced foragers to dig up a plant's roots, or aid in the spread of invasive species.

Meier, the DNR official, said the state agency recognizes the mental, physical and spiritual value of being outside and harvesting something you can eat.

That's been lost in the conversation, he said.

''In the conversation, it's like, ‘We want to be able to harvest as much as we want, wherever we want.' And that's just not the way foraging goes. You have to take some, leave some for other people, leave some to come back next year,'' Meier said.

The DNR is also bound by the Outdoor Recreation Act, a law that essentially spells out the uses of public lands, including to prevent ''material disturbance of the natural features of the park or the introduction of undue artificiality.''

Meier also specified that the DNR's initial concerns were about the impacts of foraging on specific sites and state parks, not all of Minnesota's lands. (There are 235,000 acres of state parks and 4.2 million acres of state forests).

''Our system is not set up against foragers, I wouldn't think, in any way. You just need to understand what you can and can't do, where you want to do it,'' Meier said. ''The mission statement of the DNR is to work with Minnesotans to enjoy the outdoors, basically, to sum it up.''

Foraging recommendations are due Feb. 28

Ikwe, the Ojibwe representative, told the task force a story about children eating wild strawberries. When the berries fell from their hands, the seeds planted in the ground.

''When you harvest in a responsible way, and give those little gifts back to the earth, you can actually create more,'' Ikwe said.

And perhaps that's the biggest throughline: Everyone agrees on the need to strengthen people's connection to nature while preserving and nurturing it.

Sammie Peterson, the food systems manager at Prairie Island Indian Community, addressed a few questions about regulation during her public comment in November. But Peterson also described a ''legitimate crisis of disconnection'' between people and the natural world, and a fear-based approach to nature that underscores life today.

''Foraging, specifically, I feel like is a way to address this disconnection problem on almost every single level,'' Peterson later said in an interview.

The task force can't fix all those issues.

But it has until Feb. 28 to submit its recommendations to the DNR and Legislature. They won't have any formal effect other than being put on public record as potential changes the state could make.

Among the possibilities are more research about the impacts of foraging and initiatives to educate the public that are rooted in traditional ecological knowledge; changes to permits, new permits, or none of the above; streamlined rules to clarify regulations across different types of land.

''We're hoping that in the end, we'll be able to create those clear, simple and fair rules and recommendations for foraging on our state lands, and that we'll be able to give people access — more access — but at the same time protect our natural resources, our state lands, for many generations,'' Pha said.

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