NIWRA Annual Mushroom Festival (4th Annual mid-island mushroom festival) Hosted by: North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre and Arrowsmith Naturalists Sunday, October 14 at 11 AM - 4 PM 1240 Leffler Road, Errington, BC $5 donation. 12 and under are free
2018 Mushroom Festival Speaker Lineup 11:30 Native and cultivated truffles in BC by Dr Shannon Berch Dr Shannon Berch is a research scientist working with the BC Ministry of Environment in Victoria. She works on soil conservation, soil biology, and Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs), especially edible mycorrhizal mushrooms such as truffles, pine mushrooms and chanterelles. She is also a founding member of the South Vancouver Island Mycological Society (Victoria area mushroom club) and the Truffle Association of British Columbia (dedicated to the development of a Mediterranean truffle farm sector in the province and appreciation of our native truffles). 12:30 Commercial wild mushroom harvest and sustainability by Ben & Celia Pat Ben has been passionate about cooking and foraging since he was a kid. He has a Master in Agroforestry. Celia loves being outdoors, is an advocate for environmental preservation and holds a Bachelor in Entrepreneurship. Together they formed Forest for Dinner which specializes in harvesting and selling all sorts of wild food from across Canada. 1:30 Lets talk about toxicity, an introduction to poisonous mushrooms by Jason Gowen Jason Gowen is an amateur mycologist from Victoria BC who has been studying fungi and picking mushrooms for over a decade. When not in the forest picking and teaching about edible mushrooms or documenting death caps in the city of Victoria, he is an administrator of the Vancouver Island mushroom identification and info group on Facebook." 2:30 The diversity of mushrooms on Vancouver Island by Terry Taylor Terry is a naturalist and tour leader with many attributes who specializes in lichens and fungi. He received the Queen's Jubilee Medal for nature interpretation in 2003. Terry has studied B.C. mushrooms and plants for 50 years and is a founding member of the Vancouver Mycological Society. He was also instrumental in starting off this Mid-Island Mushroom Festival four years ago. On a scientific level, Terry collected and identified lichens for an antibiotic research project in the UBC Department of Microbiology. A new potential anti-tumor compound, uncialamycin, was isolated from one of these collections.
Event updated posted: "WANTED: Mushrooms! Colourful, boring, big or small - we want them all. Please drop off any mushroom samples to the Wildlife Recovery Centre 1240 Leffler Rd in Errington between 11am-3pm on Sat Oct.13. A team of amazing volunteers will be there identifying your finds and putting them on display for the Mushroom Festival Sun Oct.14th. **We only need a couple of each kind (or a "cluster") so please don't bring 400 of one type.** I'm getting excited for the festival!!!"