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Moss is a popular item to harvest from the forests and then to sell to brokers who sell it worldwide to florists. The forest growth is limited and harvesting is difficult, probably impossible to control. Harvesters (2005) can generally get between 75 cents and $1 per pound of moss in the western USA. While moss harvesting can be done legally, but often isn't. The U.S. Forest Service issues permits for moss harvesting. Permits have conditions and regulations. Permits cost $25 for 500 pounds or $50 for 1,000 pounds ( Siuslaw National Forest). A map defines the area in which moss can be harvested; they can't take moss from within 200 feet of a stream or a developed recreation site. Harvesters are supposted to take only every-other plant but this cannot be enforced. They agree to must pick it in a way that doesn't harm the plant. It's prohibited to take moss from higher than 20 feet above ground.The maximum amount one family can harvest is 1,000 pounds per year, and everyone who is harvesting must have a permit.
The growth rates are unknown and season specific. Regulating harvest is difficult (even if exact plant community needs were known). The potential for ecosytem disruption are great. Current self-reporting conditions are said to be like going hunting, getting a deer and taking it home without getting the deer tag punched and then using the same tag to get a second deer. Harvesters are supposed to write on the permits how much moss they have harvested but the truthfulness of this has not been studied.
The mosses are interesting plants and very attractive. They will probably yield readily to GIS-related study. There seems to be a potential, small-scale busines to be created in plastic greenhouses with equipment designed to produce mosses hydroponically in moist, low light conditions. Where there is a market, it can be developed legally and abuses to forests and other communities (e.g., lichen) reduced. In the West, mosses are picked from trees. In the East they occur on trees and the ground. It seems likely that organic medium strips or "felts" can be developed with moss growing on them. They can be packaged and sent in cool packaging for direct sale and easy use by florists. One National Forest (Siuslaw) sells 125,000 pounds a year.
The Moss Group potentials seem to be (2005):
See
Newspaper article to be abstracted
Moss has become cash crop in Appalachia, Pacific
Northwest
But effects are depletion on forest ecology are
unknown
Monday, October 17, 2005
By Vicki Smith, The Associated Press
LOOKOUT, W.Va. -- Deep in the forest, miles from
anything resembling a town, even logging roads and
rutted four-wheeler paths dissolve. That's when J.P.
Anderson gears down his battered Suzuki Samurai,
crashing up the side of a mountain with bone-rattling
force.
Amy Sancetta, Associated Press
J.P. Anderson collects sheets of moss from a fallen
tree deep in the forest near Lookout, W.Va.
Click photo for larger image.
"Hang on," he says, scanning the trees for gaps and
snapping the smaller ones in his way. Eventually, the
engine goes silent and the vehicle comes to rest
against a trunk 6 inches thick.
Mr. Anderson hops out and hikes downhill. Then he
spots it: a long-fallen, rotting tree covered in a
blanket of brilliant green moss some 2 inches thick
and several feet long.
Quickly and gently, he rips up a long section of the
living carpet and stuffs it into one of eight
woven-plastic sacks he'll fill in an hour.
"They told me money don't grow on trees. They was
lying to me," he says, grinning through his black
beard. "I know better now. It grows on rocks, too."
Moss is the all-purpose sponge of the forest, storing
water, releasing nutrients and housing tiny critters.
But across Appalachia and in the Pacific Northwest,
it's more than that. It's a way to make ends meet when
jobs are few.
Picking is hard work on a hot day. Sweaty. Dirty. And
it pays only about $5 a sack. But for Mr. Anderson,
33, who lives simply as a single father to twin boys,
the solitude and independence beat the construction
jobs that often pay the bills.
"I don't like dealing with people, actually. I don't
deal well with being told what to do," he says,
hefting another 20- to 30-pound sack over his
shoulder.
What Mr. Anderson picks could end up in a floral
arrangement or a craft project, maybe even on a movie
set. Along the way, it will support more than a dozen
jobs, from people who sort it, dry it and package it
to those who ship and sell it.
Amy Sancetta, Associated Press
A package of moss, gathered and processed in West
Virginia, hangs on a rack at the Jo-Ann Fabric &
Crafts store in Solon, Ohio.
Click photo for larger image.
But biologists, businessmen and pickers say the good
stuff is getting harder to find -- and the money
harder to make.
Moss is not commercially grown, so buyers depend on
the wilderness. Some state and national forests,
though, have banned harvesting, worried about what
they are losing when moss leaves the ecosystem.
A less ethical picker will strip the logs bare, but
Mr. Anderson and father James, who have witnessed the
devastation of strip mining and clear-cut logging,
always leave clumps behind to help the spore-driven
plant regenerate. To thrive, it needs moisture, cool
temperatures and shade.
"You never pick it all," the elder Mr. Anderson says.
"Not if you want it to grow back again."
How long that takes is a question that has some
scientists and U.S. Forest Service officials wrestling
with the regulation of this secretive industry, where
there are plenty of opinions but few facts.
North Carolina's Pisgah and Nantahala national forests
expect to ban moss collection Jan. 1 after studies
there indicated a growback cycle "on the order of 15
to 20 years," says botanical specialist Gary Kauffman
of the Forest Service.
That's twice as long as some veteran pickers and moss
buyers think it takes.
Though Mr. Kauffman agrees the science is still
lacking, Pisgah and Nantahala will likely err on the
side of caution. That means the forests will be
off-limits to the 100 to 200 pickers a year who
typically get permits.
Nationwide, it's hard to tell how many people make a
living from moss. Most search out private land, where
they go unnoticed by hunt clubs and logging companies.
Nor are all pickers alike. Some are chronically
unemployed, living on society's fringe. Some are
recreational, filling sacks while hunting or hiking.
Some teenagers do it at county fair time, for pocket
money.
Few pickers are eager to talk about their work.
Sometimes that's because it involves trespassing and
illegal picking, but mainly it's to protect their
sites from competitors.
Sue Studlar, a West Virginia University biologist who
has studied the business, argues that overall, moss is
"mined, rather than sustainably harvested."
Large-scale removal can inadvertently damage other
species, from ferns to salamanders.
The Monongahela National Forest banned mossing in 2001
until it could study the impact. Two years later, she
concluded that picking should be discouraged near
limestone cliffs and wet areas, that no log or rock
should be stripped bare, and that known "biodiversity
hot spots" should be off-limits.
But "potentially, if you did it right," moss could be
harvested without harming the ecosystem, Ms. Studlar
says. It falls off in clumps naturally as it
regenerates, and pickers could harvest that.
The Monongahela, which covers nearly 1 million acres
in West Virginia, may someday restore moss-picking
permits. Ecologist Melissa Thomas-Van Gundy says that
possibility is not a priority, but she agrees with
mossers who say they and others should be allowed to
take non-timber products from the forest, including
ginseng root and medicinal herbs like goldenseal,
before the loggers destroy them.
"We allow other uses, so the question is how to fit
this in," she says.
Whether it's done sustainably or on the sly, there's
little doubt mossing will continue.
Pat Muir, a botanist at Oregon State University,
figures mossing was an $8.4 million to $33.7 million
business in 2003, with anywhere from 4.2 million to 17
million pounds being harvested in the two dominant
regions, Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest.
Data is hard to come by, and most moss dealers won't
share sales figures, but Ms. Muir reached her
conclusions by interviewing those who would talk,
analyzing six years of export data from the U.S.
Department of Commerce and making a series of
assumptions.
Typically, moss pickers take their sacks to a
processor, someone who dries and packages it, then
sells it at a higher price to a wholesale distributor.
But Ms. Muir says that's changing. In the Northwest,
immigrants from Cambodia, Laos and Mexico have begun
to form cooperatives, bypassing the buyer to contract
with distributors.
In the southern coalfields of West Virginia, Robert
Walker is also skipping the middleman. The ex-miner
from Oceana has launched Pine Hill Moss, a small
online business that sells directly to the user on
eBay.
About 90 miles east, in the town of Rainelle, moss
hangs bark-side-up on wires strung across a 5-acre
lot, drying in the sun.
Jokes Tim Thomas, owner of Appalachian Root and Herb
Co., "This is hillbilly laundry."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05290/589729.stm
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June 27, 2005