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ELKINS -- Government officials are warning local residents not to indulge in "excessive digging" of ramps in the Monongahela National Forest.
"If we keep digging them and not making them sustainable, we won't have any more ramps," Kelly Bridges, public affairs officer for Monongahela National Forest, told The Inter-Mountain Thursday. "Just this year, one of the National Parks in West Virginia decided to not allow any ramp digging at all."
At the end of 2021, it was announced that visitors will no longer be allowed to harvest ramps within the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, Gauley River National Recreation Area and Bluestone National Scenic River in West Virginia.
Not many people are aware there are laws in place for digging ramps on government property.
"It's always been like that because of federal legislation," Bridges said. "We first put out a news release about it in 2020 and until that time I don't think most people knew anything about the guidelines. We started putting those news releases out because we knew excessive digging was happening. So we thought we needed to educate the public."
While collecting ramps for personal uses is permitted in the Mon Forest within established limits, commercial harvesting of ramps is prohibited. This includes selling ramps collected for personal use. What this means is that it is illegal to sell any ramps which are taken from government land. You can, however, sell ramps that are taken from privately owned land.
A person may also only have a maximum of two gallons of ramps taken from National Forest at any one time. This amount typically fits in a plastic grocery bag or equals about 180 whole plants, including roots and leaves. Individuals can not collect ramps for someone else, but if they are harvesting in a group, each person can possess the two-gallon limit.
Extension Agent Hanna Fincham of the WVU Extension Office in Elkins is an expert on ramps and his written informative material about the plant. She said the problem is that people are unaware of how to properly collect one of West Virginia's most prized delicacies.
"Over-harvesting is definitely a problem with ramps because a lot of people don't know the proper way to do it," Fincham said. "They will go and take the entire ramp patch and then next year they will do it again. Then after five or six years of doing that there won't be any more ramps. They think they're going to keep regrowing, but you have to leave some because that's how they get seeds."
Fincham said after the ramps are gone it takes a long time for the patches to become large again, as proven by a ramp patch she has on her own property.
"My parents planted some ramps on our property close to 35 years ago," she said. "And it is just now to the point of being a really big patch. It took that long to make it really big. So it's important for people to know the guidelines and how to take care of those ramp patches."
The Monongahela National Forest encourages people who collect ramps in the national forest to follow these guidelines to ensure abundant ramps in the future:
Collect ramps only in patches with more than 100 plants.
If you find a patch that has already been harvested, move on to another area.
When collecting ramps from a large clump, take only one-fifth of the plants. Leaving behind most of the plants will allow them to mature and go to seed, and the patch will recover faster.
If digging bulbs, use a soil fork or a small hand trowel and a knife, rather than a large shovel. Shovels disturb the root system of neighboring ramps and other plants much more than these smaller tools. To dig ramps, loosen the soil with the soil fork or hand trowel and use the knife to cut the ramp roots beneath the bulb.
After you dig a ramp, cover the bare soil with leaves. This will reduce the likelihood of invasive species.
Ramp collection season typically runs from late April to early June, but some are often found and dug in the month of March. For information on how to grow ramps on your own property, go to https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/compass/2017/04/12/grow-your-own-ramps-2/.