Wildfire destroys prized mushrooms, income source for Tibetans — Radio Free Asia

A current wildfire in a Tibetan-populated space of China’s Sichuan province ravaged huge swathes of forests lined with pine and oak timber that nurtured a hidden treasure and an financial lifeline for residents — matsutake mushrooms. 

The wildfire that broke out in March in Nyagchu county, or Yajiang in Chinese language, in Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, compelled 3,000 folks from the normal Kham area of Tibet to evacuate the realm and burned down a number of homes. No human casualties have been reported. 

However the hearth destroyed about one-sixth of the county’s matsutake output, Chen Wen, director of the Yajiang Matsutake Industrial Park, advised Chinese language media.

The mushrooms, which Tibetans collect to complement their earnings and others use in dishes in Japan, South Korea and China, could not develop once more within the burned space for a minimum of 20 years, he mentioned.

China is the world’s largest producer and exporter of matsutake mushrooms, exporting US$30.3 million in 2022, whereas Japan is the highest importer, bringing in US$24.7 million that 12 months.

The first locations the place the mushrooms develop in China are throughout the Tibetan plateau, together with in Nyagchu county, which accounted for greater than 12% of China’s annual output, based on the Yajiang County Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Science and Know-how Bureau. 

Demanding and profitable

Many households in Nyagchu — the place Tibetans make up nearly all of the county’s inhabitants of over 51,000 — have for years braved the frigid mountain air to forage for the elusive mushrooms throughout the conventional harvest season between July and September. 

Foraging matsutake is a demanding if profitable job with harvesters usually spending weeks at excessive altitudes in harsh climate situations to seek for the mushrooms, mentioned an space resident. Some varieties are uncommon and require meticulous looking, whereas others develop underground and require cautious removing, he mentioned.

“In someday, you may make greater than 2,000 yuan (US$300) throughout the harvesting season,” mentioned a supply inside Tibet who requested anonymity for worry of reprisal.

Residents consider that the affect of the fireplace could power some Tibetans to desert matsutake harvesting and search different sources of earnings in different areas.

However at a current press convention on the affect of the wildfire, Sichuan provincial representatives didn’t point out the catastrophe’s potential results on the livelihoods of Tibetans who depend on matsutake harvesting.

The hearth additionally broken the native ecosystem, killing birds and bugs that play a task within the development of the mushrooms, mentioned an space resident, including that the long-term ecological penalties of the blaze stay unclear.

“Nyagchu is famend for its abundance of naturally grown matsutake, and the harvest is a vital supply of earnings for a lot of Tibetan households within the county,” mentioned Washington-based Tsering Palden, a local of Nyagchu, who has offered the mushrooms prior to now. 

Palden estimates that space households earn about 200,000 yuan (US$28,000) yearly from promoting the mushrooms.

‘Oak mushrooms’

In Tibet, matsutake mushrooms are mostly known as “oak mushrooms,” or beshing shamo and besha for brief in Tibetan, in a nod to their symbiotic relationship with evergreen oak timber in Tibet. 

In his 2022 e book “What a Mushroom Lives for: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make,” Michael Hathaway, professor of anthropology at Simon Fraser College in Vancouver, Canada, describes how Tibetan villagers in Yunan province hunt for them.

The villagers collect the mushrooms within the morning and return dwelling when sellers arrive at a market or drive alongside the roads, shopping for them as they go, he writes. The sellers then promote their matsutake to different sellers, who organize for them to be shipped throughout China and to Japan and South Korea.

The worth of matsutake mushrooms had jumped over the previous 40 years from the equal of about US$1 per pound (2.2 kg) in 1985 to US$70 per pound, based on Beijing-based Tibetan author and poet Tsering Woeser.

The mushrooms have particular environmental necessities for development and thrive in undisturbed, high-altitude forests with the proper stability of daylight and moisture, mentioned the supply inside Tibet.

“The hearth has disrupted these situations and should take years for the ecosystem to get better sufficiently to assist matsutake development,” he added. 

Translated and edited by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.