Mushroom foragers, businesses in parts of B.C. lament low yield due to drought

Chef Hans Rutchmann, who has foraged mushrooms in Chilliwack, B.C., for almost 50 years, says he still remembers the bounty of fungi he could typically harvest during this season.

"One day I picked about 120 pounds of chanterelles," he told CBC's Lien Yeung. "It was just everywhere — sometimes the patches are as big as 20 metres by 30 metres."

Rutchmann says he could sell chanterelles and pine mushrooms for as much as $9 per pound but this year, he could only find a dearth of them on parched soils and tree logs.

"Wherever there is moisture, that's where they grow," he said.

"We need rain … but we haven't got it."

According to Environment and Climate Change Canada, total rainfall in Chilliwack — about 100 kilometres east of Vancouver — for the month of October from 2012 to 2022 fell from the peak of 353 millimetres in 2014 to 44.3 millimetres this year as of Tuesday.

Last week, EmergencyInfoBC also issued a warning about severe droughts not only in the Lower Mainland, but also the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island.

Nanaimo-based ecologist Terry Taylor, who forages mushrooms with local preservation group Arrowsmith Naturalists, says the drought has been so extreme that he and fellow group members couldn't find a single mushroom after six hours of searching in forests.

Taylor estimates that wild mushrooms on Vancouver Island have decreased by 95 per cent this year due to the exceptionally dry weather.

"We have been under climatic stress for quite a few years, but we haven't had this situation ever before," Taylor said.

Limited mushroom supply push up prices

B.C. is Canada's second-largest mushroom-producing province after Ontario, and exports large volumes of the fungi to the U.S. and Japan, according to Statistics Canada.

Joe Salvo, president of Ponderosa Mushrooms based in Maple Ridge, says his company used to pick, grow and process more than 36,000 kilograms of chanterelles, pine mushrooms, shiitake, matsutake and other types of fungi in a typical season.

But because of the parched weather in the Lower Mainland this year, he says the company has had to rely on its operations in the rainier Terrace, in northwestern B.C., for picking and growing mushrooms.

"It's next to nothing [in the Lower Mainland] — 100 kilos a day," Salvo said, adding that the prices of mushrooms are now "sky-high" due to the limited supply.

"The price of fresh chanterelles this time of year would be $2 to $4 a pound — we're at $10 now."

Salvo says he hopes more rain will come soon to the Lower Mainland.

"It might be a little bit too late because it's getting cold, so we'll see — there's still some hope."

WATCH | Warm temperatures and low rainfall deal severe blow to B.C.'s mushroom industry