GUARDS are being employed in the French countryside to protect wild mushrooms amid pitched battles between pickers salivating over the best harvest in living memory. With noses broken, insults flying, windscreens smashed and tyres slashed, rural communes are using tough restrictions in an attempt to end the “cep wars”.

Many mayors have introduced licences that authorise locals to search for mushrooms but ban strangers. The system is gaining ground after sun and rain produced ideal conditions for ceps, chanterelles, Craterellus cornucopioides and other wild mushrooms.

With France gripped by what one commentator described as “la folie des champignons”, guards are being paid to patrol woods in search of unauthorised pickers.

Several dozen people are being investigated by the state prosecution service on suspicion of mushroom theft and breaking the French Forestry Code. They face fines of up to €300 (£202), although the penalty can rise to €1,500 for professional traffickers.

Pierre Dulong, the Mayor of Ligardes village in the Gers département in southwest France, said he pioneered the mushroom licensing system after the commune’s forests were invaded by “les urbains”.

“People were coming from towns up to 150km away and a lot of them were not at all respectful of our way of life. They didn’t realise they could pick our mushrooms only with the permission of landowners. They thought they had the right to pick mushrooms and got stroppy when told that was not the case.

“These townies insulted land owners who tried to keep them away and sometimes attacked them as well. People were beaten up over this. It was intolerable.” The owners of Ligardes woods now pay €10 for the right to seek wild mushrooms, while other residents pay €20.

The funds have been used to finance notices which say “Picking Forbidden” and to employ guards to arrest illegal pickers.

In the Charente, western France, a pensioner had his basket of ceps stolen and the tyres of his car slashed. In the Pyrenees Denise Larcade, 82, a farmer’s wife, was pushed and insulted by two men who stole her basket of mushrooms.

M Dulong said: “They even attacked an 80-year-old bloke for his mushrooms the other day and broke his nose.”

Eric Cusson, who heads a team of guards in southwest France, said many rural councils had followed M Dulong’s lead. “More and more mayors, as well as private landowners, are using our services because they are fed up with people picking mushrooms on their land,” he said.

“You find refrigerated lorries bottling the mushrooms by the side of the woods ready to sell them to restaurants — and that really irks the landowners.”

About 120 companies trade in wild mushrooms in France, paying pickers to find between 5,000 and 10,000 tonnes a year.

Good food and where to buy it
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