Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s Ellen Winter reflects on a month of activity in and around the Stroud Valleys.

TODAY I’ve been out in the gorgeous autumn woods of the Slad valley leading a ‘fungi for beginners’ course.

On the slopes between the towering beech trees a group of new learners are being introduced to the bizarre and beautiful world of fungi – earthstars, amethyst deceiver, clementine-scented woodwax and spooky dead men’s fingers.

One of the first things discussed is the law around picking fungi – for identification or for the pot.

I learned to forage with my mother as a child and still have that ‘childhood’ thrill of finding wild food – the seemingly instinctive need to pick as much as you can reach, to fill your basket and your pockets as well if you can. Because it’s there, it’s wild, and it’s free to take. But is it?

Now, as part of my work with GWT, I lead forage walks. Free food is a great way to encourage people to learn about and care for their local countryside and wild food is incredibly fashionable at the moment too.

All land in the UK is owned by somebody, the wild food found there is owned too.

To my mind, the main owners of wild food should be – first and foremost – the wildlife that depends on it to live. At this time of year badgers, blackbirds, dormice, thrushes and foxes are all trying to fatten up on blackberries, sloes, hazelnuts, hips, haws or fungi, so we need to leave most of the bounty for them, just taking a little from each tiny territory so the residents can feast – and so survive.

More prosaically, there are human laws that cover foraging. It’s not widely known, but some species and many of the richest foraging sites are legally protected.

While picking blackberries along highways and public footpaths is popular, delicious and legal – collecting to sell, uprooting or damaging anything, straying off the path to pick, taking from protected sites (like Minchinhampton and Rodborough Commons) or picking protected species is definitely frowned on and increasingly prosecuted because of the damage caused to wildlife.

So please do enjoy your blackberry crumble and sloe gin, but remember to leave plenty for our wild friends too.