The first huckleberry season since the U.S. Forest Service banned commercial harvesting in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest was a resounding success for conservation of the berries, as well as Native nations’ treaty-reserved rights to gather them.
The Forest Service banned commercial harvesting because it strained already-shrinking huckleberry habitat, and Native gatherers reported threats and harassment from other berry pickers.
Pacific Northwest Native nations already struggle to obtain their traditional foods — including fish, berries, roots and game — that have been harmed by Columbia River dams, climate change, renewable energy development projects and habitat destruction.
Despite victories for Native pickers this year, some commercial harvesters still were out in the forest, and the berries still are for sale across the internet. A U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman for Gifford Pinchot National Forest declined to comment.
“I’m 49, so I can probably say I’ve been picking for 48 years,” said Elaine Harvey, a member of the Yakama Nation’s Kamílpa Band.
Harvey’s grandmother introduced her to the tradition, taking her camping and picking in areas their family and nation had walked for thousands of years. The nutrient-rich berries have always been a staple of the Yakama diet, as well as ceremonies, Harvey explained.
But she has seen fewer and fewer berries at key gathering sites around the Gifford Pinchot National Forest since the U.S. Forest Service allowed commercial huckleberry harvesting in the 1990s.
“It just felt like we’re in competition for our traditional foods,” she said.
Demand has skyrocketed as companies incorporate huckleberries into an increasingly large number of products, in turn driving the influx of commercial pickers.
“It’s like a free-for-all for the commercial people,” she said. “All they need to do is pay $75 for a permit. Well, nowadays, a gallon of huckleberries goes for $100 and on a bad huckleberry year … for $200.”
Yearly commercial harvests range from 50,000 to 70,000 gallons of berries, according to the Forest Service. Each gallon of berries weighs about 5 pounds.
“Those are big incentives for commercial people to be up in the national forest, taking as much huckleberries as they want,” Harvey said.
While a roughly $100 seasonal permit allowed commercial harvesters to remove up to 70 gallons of berries a year, enforcement has been almost nonexistent, an investigation by High Country News found.
Harvey said the swelling number of pickers — many of whom pick bushes until nothing is left or kill them with rakes — has meant some Yakama ceremonies have gone without berries on the table. In one widely publicized incident, her elderly aunt was threatened with a machete by a picker.
And those aren’t isolated incidents, said Jeremy Takala, a member of the Yakama Nation Tribal Council.
“Folks are being threatened with any kind of weapons — machetes, knives or even just simply a rifle or a handgun,” he said.
That harassment combined with shrinking habitat for the key food is threatening a right guaranteed to the Yakama Nation by the 1855 treaty their leaders made with the United States.
In the agreement, the nations ceded 11.5 million acres, including large parts of Gifford Pinchot. In exchange, they reserved the right to fish, hunt and gather the tribe’s traditional foods on the reservation and in the ceded area.
“We’re trying to just simply go out and exercise that right,” Takala said. “We need that access, and if there isn’t access, then that treaty right isn’t going to be fully exercised.”
All that led Takala, Harvey and many others to work to get the Forest Service to ban commercial harvests. And after decades of effort, they succeeded in March when the agency announced the ban.
“We actually had berries to pick this year,” Harvey said. “And it really felt like the clock went back 24 years.”
Harvey made it out to pick about a dozen times this year, despite her demanding role as manager for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fishing Commission’s watershed department.
On those trips, she saw things she hadn’t seen since she started taking her then-young son up to pick decades ago, before the commercial harvest exploded.
Harvey went up to gather in Gifford Pinchot on Labor Day with her 10-year-old daughter, 28-year-old son and 67-year-old mom and others. Scenes from the trip have stuck with her.
“I witnessed other tribal families camping, and I witnessed elders walking around, picking berries,” she said. “Some of our elders are handicapped, but they’re still out there trying to pick, and then I even saw children playing freely in huckleberry fields.”
This year, Harvey’s mom could safely pick by herself while the family went to more mountainous areas she couldn’t access. Harvey said her daughter and grandson experienced the Gifford Pinchot National Forest as she had with her grandmother nearly five decades earlier.
“I didn’t have to worry, because I knew my camping neighbors were tribal families, and I felt comfortable,” she said.
Enforcement of the ban included not just the Forest Service but also the state Department of Fish & Wildlife, the Yakama Nation’s Department of Public Safety and the Cowlitz Tribe Public Safety Department, Takala said.
While the harvest was the first in decades many Native people filled their baskets and felt safe, it wasn’t without reports of commercial picking.
Sellers are getting the berries somehow. Northwest Wild Foods’ website offers “Fresh Frozen Wild Blue Huckleberries from Mt. St. Helens” for about $100 a gallon.
“Our wild blue huckleberries are hand-gathered in the lush woodlands around Mt. St. Helens each summer where our intrepid pickers often find themselves competing with Black bear, cougar and other native animals for the sweet, yet tangy, juicy huckleberries,” the website states.
The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Mount St. Helens is within the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, raising questions about how the company obtained such a large volume of berries from the national forest to sell when commercial harvest is banned.
Tillamook’s Mountain Huckleberry flavored ice cream is maybe the most popular huckleberry product. But it was discontinued in early 2025, said Tori Harms, the company’s director of corporate communications.
“We have never sourced huckleberries from the Gifford Pinchot National Forest,” Harms said. “When we were making Mountain Huckleberry ice cream, all of the berries for it came from farms in the Northeastern U.S. and Canada.”
Dozens and dozens of huckleberry products, including soaps and lotions, still are available, though they may be sourced elsewhere or before the ban.
And the berries face more challenges than just the commercial harvest.
Fir trees have increasingly taken over berry habitat, a problem that started when the government stopped the controlled burns that Native people had always used to maintain berry habitat (although there have been notable exceptions to that in recent decades).
The species also faces threats from invasive fruit flies, a growing long-term problem that Heritage University researchers are addressing.
Harvey — who holds a doctorate in natural resources and conservation — said the flies, fir trees and commercial harvesters are a trio that threatens Native ways of life, the berries’ continued presence in the forest and the region’s ecosystems.
But in the meantime, she, Takala and others in regional Native nations are working to get the Forest Service to extend the ban — and maybe even spread it to other areas that are important to tribes.
Whether they succeed next year or not, the most profound legacy of this year’s ban may be in what it has inspired.
Takala said, “Two weeks ago, I had a Nez Perce tribal member reach out to me and ask similar questions, like, ‘How’d you guys do that?’”
