The role of recreational foraging for relations to the landscape after a forest fire.

Foraging, i. e. the gathering of edible plants (or animals such as seafood) has a long tradition in many European cultures. In Scandinavia, foraging is a recreation and leisure experience activity undertaken by the urban population. In Hultman’s (1983) and Hörnsten’s (2000) studies of outdoor recreation in Sweden, picking berries and mushrooms was recognised as a significant recreational activity, frequency of visits remained relatively constant, even showing increases in certain groups. In general, as Sarlöv-Herlin and Herlin (2015) identified, academic studies on foraging tend to list resources for consumption. Few studies deal however with people’s relation to the landscape through the process of foraging, and what this means for their link to landscape and well-being. Results from Butler et al. (2017) shows that individuals in an area of mid–south Sweden, who undertook berry and mushroom picking, developed stronger attachment and memories for that landscape. Additionally they showed that those who had undertaken such activities maintained positive feelings and memories of landscape after a major forest fire (approx. 14 000 hectares) in 2014.

In this paper we draw on these findings in order to examining what it is about recreational foraging that promotes attachment and helps maintaining positive feelings after a forest fire. We address the relevance of foraging for developing connection to landscape and what happens when that activity is interrupted by drastic landscape change, in a Swedish context. We use the site of the largest forest fire in modern Swedish history as a case for examining the relevance of foraging. Prior to the fire, there was a positive association between the activities of enjoying nature and picking berries and mushrooms with both components of landscape-identity. This suggests that the more participants enjoyed foraging, the stronger their attachment to the landscape (emotion component), as well as memories and reasoning about the landscape (cognition component).

After the fire, unlike other activities, with foraging these relationships remained, implying a significant role of foraging for keeping ‘alive’ the positive feelings and memories of landscape, despite the fact that it has drastically altered. In the paper we deepen the relevance of this, through a mapped based section of the questionnaires and qualitative responses, supplemented by interviews from individuals in the area. While foraging is the focus for engaging in the landscape, it also has many other aspects. Foraging is built on a rather unique knowledge that needs to be disseminated and transferred in order to be sustained. Gathering of wild plants is not only a way of reconnect to landscape and places; it also has a pedagogic value in the way it could stimulate people’s ability to ‘read the landscape’, yet at the same time it provides the social and health benefits of outdoor recreation.