Experts say foragers taking too much, selling the goods commercially and harming fragile ecosystems
Foragers for wild garlic and mushrooms have been picking ingredients in protected sites, taking too much and putting wildlife at risk, experts have warned.
The trend of gathering food in the wild has boomed in recent years, with top restaurants serving foraged food on the menu, and it can be a healthy and sustainable way for people to get closer to nature.
Continue reading...Patrols suggested as residents say foragers collecting large bags of wild garlic are ruining annual supply
Usually in the springtime, Millham Lane in the Cornish town of Lostwithiel is flanked by thick, unbroken banks of strongly scented wild garlic.
But this year ugly gaps have appeared in the bright green swathe after they were stripped by foragers – apparently professionals – intent on sourcing a fresh, free ingredient for fashionable dishes such as wild garlic pesto.
Continue reading...My parents have been eating pheasants killed on the roads for years and encouraging me to try them. Is this the most ethical approach to meat-eating?
Motorists shoot me funny looks as I sheepishly cross a scrubby verge, trying my best to conceal the dead pheasant under my arm. I am in a part of Saddleworth Moor called the Isle of Skye by locals, and have just collected a free meal from the middle of the road.
Nobody can agree on how this area of moorland, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, earned its nickname. Some think it comes from a Victorian navvy, who exclaimed in a broad Irish brogue: “Look, there’s an ’ole in the sky,” as he considered a parting in the thick mist above him. Others think it was named after an inn of the same name. But either way, the area should be immediately renamed Pheasant Cemetery. Because, before I picked up my own bird, I counted 46 pheasant carcasses in various stages of decomposition, scattered and splattered on the road over several miles as I drove to Holmfirth for a day out.
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