Ethical Wildcrafting
If you spend time in the wellness world, you’re bound to run into this term: wildcrafting. And if you’re anything like me, you might roll your eyes internally. I know; leave it to white people to create a trendy new term for an ancient practice. But at its core, wildcrafting just means gathering plants from where they grow wild, by hand, with intention, for use in medicine, food, and skincare. I've come to think of it less as a harvesting method and more as an ongoing relationship. You take from the land, and in return you owe it respect and care.
Wildcrafting in Practice
I want to be clear that this isn't some free-for-all where you wander into the woods or hills and grab whatever catches your eye. Good foragers spend time learning to identify plants on sight, the seasonality of plant growth and stages, the context of the ecosystem, which populations are endangered or at risk and which ones are invasive. Ethical wildcrafters move slowly and think constantly about the tradeoff between what they're taking and what the land can actually spare. There's real intention and discipline to it.
At the same time, we all start somewhere, and the last thing I want is to discourage folks from learning how to sustainably wildcraft. The best starting point is a local guide, ideally someone who has spent years learning the local ecosystem and can help guide you. If that’s not available or accessible, a good local field guide is an option. Your local native plant nurseries are usually a wealth of information as well. Follow local herbalists, foragers, and farmers on social media. Try to find local herb walks or workshops in your area - don’t be afraid to ask around.
Guidelines for Ethical Wildcrafting
Sustainable wildcrafting comes down to a handful of rules that experienced foragers don't break. Skip these and you're not really wildcrafting anymore, you're just stripping the land.
Take small amounts of whatever is abundant; take nothing from whatever is scarce
Leave enough behind that the population can recover before you come back
Leave some for the critters! So many plants are food sources for native wildlife; you can go to the herb shop, but they can’t go to a grocery store.
Stay away from anything rare, threatened, or endangered - full stop
Harvest in a way that actually helps the plant keep growing rather than killing it or setting it back
Wildcrafting in New Mexico
Here in Albuquerque where I live, high desert plains, piñon-juniper foothills, scrubby volcanic boulders and craters, river valleys, and mountains over 10,000 feet all sit within a day's drive of each other. Centuries of Indigenous herbal tradition run through this landscape, and it shows in the plants foragers still turn to today: Piñon, Prickly Pear, Chaparral (also known as Creosote Bush), Yerba Mansa, and my namesake, Desert Willow.
Always keep in mind that this part of New Mexico is the ancestral and unceded homeland of the 19 Pueblos, and that other parts of NM are the lands of the Diné; the Jicarilla, Mescalero, and Ft. Sill Apache; and the Zuni, and treat the land and others with kindness and respect.
19 Pueblos of central NM: Jemez, Zia, Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Isleta, Sandia, Nambé, Ohkay Ohwingeh, Picuris, San Ildefonso, Acoma, Laguna, Pojoaque, Tesuque, Zuni, Santa Clara, Taos