An Ethical Forager's Guide to Wildcrafting

When it comes to herbalism, there are many different approaches, schools of thought, and materia medicas that vary from one tradition to the next. Every herbalist has a slightly different way of doing things that is dependent on their own experiences with plants, their teachers, what they have observed through working with clients, and the traditions that they study. One thing most herbalists seem to agree on is the importance of allyship with medicinal herbs and the ethical requirements of walking the plant path.

The path of the herbalist is filled with joy and excitement as we discover the plants around us and learn of their virtues. And at a certain point in our journey, we pull our noses out of books and venture into the plant world itself for knowledge, finding the confidence to begin filling baskets with wildcrafted herbs.

Wildcrafting can be incredibly liberating and grounding, remind us of our ancestral nature, serving as an active form of resistance against the commodification of plants and foods, and help us reclaim our traditional folkways. All people also deserve access to free, local, wild food and medicines- and and many of our cultures have a long tradition of stewarding the land through wild tending.

At the same time, wildcrafting can have very real implications; it's common for folks to get swept up in the excitement of just how much healing potential there is in nature, leading us to add more and more herbs to our wildcrafting baskets, even if we don't actually need them. Without the knowledge of how to ethically wildcraft, we engage with the possibility of causing harm to the people, plants, and animals we claim to care for.

There is a delicate balance between stepping outside and lovingly tending to wild places while enjoying their medicines -vs- harvesting plants in exploitative or extractive ways. Wildcrafting comes with responsibility and an intense commitment to do right by nature and the people who have a connection to this land. It is a task that should not be taken lightly. We must therefore be aware of how to ethically gather plants from the wild so that we do not cause harm.

⤞ Step One: Examine your relative privileges

Many people who benefit from whiteness, who have generational access to land, or who live in areas that have an abundance of resources, rarely consider the privilege they hold when it comes to wildcrafting. Yet that privilege is often significant.

There is a long and violent history of racist land laws that have kept People of Color from owning land or harvesting food and medicine on public lands. It was was illegal for Indigenous peoples of America to practice any of their spiritual traditions, including those involving plants and the land, until 1978. Many People of Color may not even have access to their traditional foods or medicines still today, while white settlers make a six-figure income from poaching wild plants and selling them online. And today, white folks don't have to fear the cops being called on them or that their lives may be taken when they take a stroll in the woods to harvest some chanterelles. People of Color, however, live with that fear every day and it extends into wildcrafting too.

These are just some of the ways that privilege intersects with wildcrafting. It's important to examine and recognize these intersections. And if you're a descendant of settlers, at the very least, it's ethical to pay reparations to the traditional Indigenous stewards of the land you are taking herbs from, and to learn their traditional ways of stewarding the land if possible; if you're not sure whose land you occupy, you can find out at Native-Land.CA.

⤞ Step Two: Ask yourself the hard questions

1. How badly do you need the plant you wish to pick? Do you really just want it or do you truly need this for food or medicine and you have no alternatives? Are you filling a basket for a cute photo or in the spirit of resilience? Are you taking only what you need? Do you actually have time to process and use what you're harvesting? Will it go to waste?
   
   
2. Are you aware of the potential costs of you harvesting that plant? Is this plant endangered? Is it a native plant whose habitat is being impacted by human activity? Have you taken the time to research other plants with similar actions that are invasive to where you currently live? Can you cultivate the plant in question in your own garden or source it from someone who grows it?
   
   
3. Do you have a relationship with that plant? Did you just come across it, get an ID, and are now super stoked to harvest it but haven't done any research on if you actually need this plant? Do you have a relationship with the environment in which that plant grows? Do you have a relationship with the folks who steward that plant or land?
   
   
4. Is this plant associated with a particular culture or sacred practice that you share no connection with? How are you giving back to the traditional stewards of the land you reside on if you are not an Indigenous person?

If you haven't asked yourself questions like these, please consider taking more time to sit with them before wildcrafting. We need to care about the actions we take and the things that we participate in and not allow ourselves to be silently complicit as species are destroyed, cultures are appropriated, and plants are over-harvested from their ancestral homelands to the point of endangerment.

⤞ Step Three: Learn about invasive plants and abundant weeds

The safest thing you can do as a beginning wildcrafter- and the best thing you can do as a budding land steward- is to get to know the abundant naturalized and invasive weeds that grow around you. Invasive and naturalized non-native plants were often brought over as food and medicine but are unfortunately opportunistic; they thrive in environments they did not evolve to be in a symbiotic relationship with, and displace or literally choke out native species as they compete for resources, while frequently providing nothing to our native fauna in return.

Plants like chickweed, cleavers, violets, multiflora rose, Japanese honeysuckle, "mimosa" (persian silk tree), burdock, blackberry, raspberry, dandelion, nettles, kudzu, yellow dock, elderflowers, and so many more tend to grow in abundance in easy-to-access, even urban, environments- sometimes even in your own backyard. Some of the most abundant are incredibly nutritious and highly medicinal. Foraging in wild fields can be super romantic and aesthetically pleasing, but one of the most sustainable things we can do is eat the weeds that shouldn't be here in the first place.

⤞ Step Four: Know what land you're allowed to access, and build relationship with it

I recommend regularly visiting a potential foraging spot for at least year before harvesting anything but abundant weeds or invasive plants. When we consistently observe the same stands of plants over periods of time, we are able to witness how they participate in their local ecosystems, what their preferences are, how abundant they actually are (especially compared to the previous seasons), and how human activity may be impacting their survival.

If you are new to your area and have not had the chance to spend time with your local landscape, try to connect with other local plant people instead. Attend plant walks, find your local herbalists, or connect with your local environmental conservation groups, master gardeners, master naturalists, and more, in order to learn about these landscapes.

Lastly, if you're harvesting on land that you do not own, make sure to get permission from the authority in charge. Some parks and public lands do not allow wildcrafting, but some parks services have programs that allow you to apply for permits to pick plants or mushrooms. Always do your research, never trespass, and never steal. The legal fees and court issues just aren't worth it.

⤞ Step Five: Only forage plants with large populations; never harvest at-risk or endangered species

Many new foragers will stumble across a patch of a plant that seems incredibly abundant to them and begin filling baskets to their heart's content. Then they hear from someone who has been tending that area for 25 years say that this patch is but a fraction of what was there 10 years ago; without the context provided by time, our ideas of abundance are entirely relative and, sometimes, misinformed.

In order to preserve biodiversity, it is important that we not harvest plants without first assessing their population and the pressures they may be facing from commercial demand and habitat loss. And in general, the following numbers apply to gathering plants in the wild when we do find them:

• If harvesting an entire plant, a maximum of one tenth of the total individuals in one location.
  
  
• If stem or root, one sixth of total individuals. When taking root from perennials, strive for lateral root-branches and leave sufficient vertical and other lateral roots to ensure the plant’s survival; cutting too close to a plant’s crown can kill it.
  
  
• If bark, harvest sparing material taken from divers, smaller branches or from trees downed by recent storms. Avoid taking bark from the main trunk of a tree.
  
  
• If flowers or fruit, harvest from one fifth of total individuals present.
  
  
• If seed, harvest from one-fifth of total individuals, scattering some of the seed harvested.

Make sure to learn about its role in its ecosystem and how to harvest it in a way that allows it to continue to thrive. If you are harvesting a plant that hosts or supports specific species (ie. milkweed and monarchs), ensure that you are only harvesting a small amount of that plant, if at all. If the plant you're harvesting propagates by seed or birds rely on its seeds come winter, make sure to leave plenty of flower heads on the plant so that it can produce seeds. If you're harvesting roots, only take a portion of each plant's root system and replant the root crown. For herbaceous materials, try to only take a few stems from each plant. Leave the woody stems of plants and fallen leaves in the fall, to provide cover for insects and other life.

Spread your harvesting out over the area and only take as much as you need, aiming to harvest no more than 10% of a wild stand. You'll also want to learn when and how to gather that plant...again, do your research and cultivate relationships with those plants. Ideally, you want the area to look as if you were never there. If you can see a significant dent in the plant population when you leave, you've taken too much.

These rules don't necessarily need to be followed for invasive weeds.

As for at-risk and endangered species, for more information on whether a wild plant is abundant in your area or at-risk, check out the United Plants Savers list and research state and federal listings for your individual area.

⤞ Step Six: Make sure you have a positive ID

Many plants have toxic look-a-likes. Some, more so than others. Before harvesting any plant, always make thoroughly sure you've positively identified it. Start by getting a local field guide, do research online, connect with local plant people, etc.

Some key toxic plants to learn how to identify are water hemlock, poison hemlock, oleander, foxglove, giant hogweed, nightshade, poke, moonseed, lily of the valley, and any other toxic plants that grow in your bioregion. Some edible mushrooms, in particular, have many lookalikes that can cause symptoms ranging from digestive upset to outright death.

⤞ Step Seven: Consider making an offering to the plant

Spreading seeds is an offering. Giving it some water is an offering. Singing songs, giving thanks, saying prayers, clearing invasive weeds choking it out, gathering trash- all of these things are offerings.

Regardless of what you choose to offer in the spirit of reciprocity, make sure that you are not leaving anything in the environment that does not belong there or may disturb the local ecosystem.

✾ When in doubt, don't

If you're ever unsure about an ID, your ability to uphold ethical harvest, or any other aspect of wildcrafting outlined here, simply don't harvest. It's that easy; we need more people willing to sit on the sidelines and not do- to feel ok with "being left out"- than we do people jumping in, jumping the gun, and causing harm. Not everything has to be for everyone.

As plant people in general, we have a responsibility to become aware of the plants and cultures that have been colonized and exploited, and learn what we can do about it. Settler descendants especially have a responsibility to hold themselves accountable for confronting the harm that our ancestors enacted against People of Color– in all things, including wildcrafting. We also all have a responsibility to consider how modern humans impact the land around us and to hold the few at the top accountable for their crimes against nature.

Wildcrafting ethics to live by:

• I promise to do no harm to both people and plants.
  
  
• I will never take more than I need or harvest an at-risk plant or stressed plant population when wildcrafting.
  
  
• I will always approach plants with respect and gratitude, asking for permission to imbibe their medicine through one or any of my senses.
  
  
• I will honor the spirits of the forests, fields, meadows, and other landscapes through offerings, prayer, songs, and scattering seeds.
  
  
• I recognize that plants are living beings too with spirits and life force who are entitled to live just as I am.
  
  
• I will do all that I can to practice regenerative land stewardship by reducing the environmental impact of myself + others, by aiding native plant populations, and by supporting the traditional stewards of the land of which I am a settler on.
  
  
• I will remember and provide reparations to those who walked this land long before me and acknowledge their medicine ways, traditions, and history without appropriating them into my practice.
  
  
• I understand that individual health is not separate from environmental health – when we harm our environments we are harming ourselves.
  
  
• I recognize the importance of living in relationship with the land and do all I can to live my life through Earth-centered awareness.

Consider supporting United Plant Savers– a non-profit dedicated to the preservation of native medicinal herbs through education and conservation. Grow your own herbs to begin with instead of wildcrafting them. Honor Native land and learn about the history of the land you currently occupy. Be a responsible, compassionate wildcrafter; together we can preserve our plant allies, create a more equitable world for all, and ensure that both plants and people flourish together, in right relationship.