mumbri.ch

I recently watched a news segment on the recent restrictions to mushroom harvesting in the canton of Vaud. I must admit, I am not a champignioneur, although I have long been interested in one day learning to identify and harvest wild mushrooms for a tasty dinner. Maybe when I retire…

This infringement on our rights to the bounty of nature is not the reason I’m writing, however. What shocked me in the linked segment was the demonstrable incompetence and wrong-headed approach shown by the Division Biodiversité et Paysage (DGE-BIODIV), or at the very least their representative for the interview.

To summarize: The canton of Vaud has, with immediate effect, restricted mushroom harvests to 2 kg per person, and prohibited mushroom harvesting for the first seven days of the month (effectively a 25% reduction in harvesting). This in the name of promoting biodiversity in the mushroom population.

Except, the cantons of Bern and Fribourg eliminated the 7 day restriction after a study demonstrated no impact on the biodiversity of mushroom species from harvesting at all.

The response given by Ms. Catherine Strehler-Perrin, director DGE-BIODIV is that the study only demonstrated bio-diversity and not genetic diversity.

I am neither a mycologist nor a biologist, or even an ecologist. I do, however, understand the fundamentals of each domain. I therefore consider myself informed enough to ask : do you really think that species diversity is uncorrelated with genetic diversity?!? I will grant that it is conceivable that there may be special cases where a species diverse ecosystem is not genetically diverse (a zoo, for example), but to assert that the former does not imply the latter is an extremely strong hypothesis. One that I would need very compelling evidence to be persuaded of.

And so we come to my actual complaint: regulation is not a space for conducting experiments and testing wild hypotheses. One can make the claim that biodiversity does not lead to genetic diversity, but it has to be tested if it is to be taken seriously. Enacting regulation is not an appropriate space to be doing those tests. There are costs to regulation, and they are almost all external to the regulatory body.

In this case, the cost is likely relatively minor: the diet of regular mushroom pickers will be impacted, as will the businesses of mushroom sellers at markets in the canton, and in turn the diets and wallets of their clients. But small is not zero, and the gain is likely limited to the vanity of a single bureaucrat. The health and finances of hundreds is not worth the feelings of Ms. Strehler-Perrin.

Let us return to the 2012 paper by Sen-Irlet et. al.: it’s conclusion that mushroom harvest restrictions have no impact on biodiversity is surprising on the face of it, but really shouldn’t be when we consider the biology of a mushroom.

As seen in this textbook excerpt, the part of the mushroom that we harvest and eat is called the “fruiting body,” so named because it is the reproductive organ of the plant and falls away after releasing its spores. In effect, harvesting a mushroom is more akin to picking an apple from a tree than shooting a boar. By picking it, you are in fact dispersing its spores along your entire route back home.

It should be no surprise then that harvest restrictions have no effect on mushroom biodiversity. The organism is not injured by the harvest, so long as the mycelium is not dug up or otherwise damaged. The effect, if any, would be second-order: local fauna is unable to eat the mushroom, and by spreading the spores, tasty mushrooms may have a reproductive advantage over non-tasty mushrooms.

I should be clear: I am not opposed to regulation. Suppose that instead of mushrooms we were talking about trees or animals? In that case it is obvious that harvest restrictions are right and necessary. But to enact non-sensical regulation under any circumstances, much less with evidence to the contrary, is corrosive and dangerous over the long term. When regulation cannot be relied upon to have net positive effects, it will be resented, or worse, ignored. Further, abusive regulations are in general enacted more often than they are repealed. Left unchecked, this can grow to a bureaucratic dystopia, where it becomes difficult or impossible to know what is permissible and what is proscribed.

My job is complexity management. Rules come into conflict faster than you think, and the consequences are greater than you expect. We should start pruning bad rules so that when we have to make a good rule we don’t paralyze the system.