When we met them, they had just walked 27 miles into a major burn, picked 200 pounds of morels and summoned a helicopter to take them back out. Other varieties, especially the prized pine mushrooms, or Armillaria ponderosa, grow in much older fire areas, where the pine regrowth is about 100 years old. In Korea, they were burning whole forests just to get 'shrooms. They had to pass a law against that. Corky and friends don't have to burn forests.
Nature takes care of that.
Fire is an ancient part of the forest cycle, and gourmet mushrooms are part of the natural succession by which they regenerate. Corky, meanwhile, pursues a vintage Northwest lifestyle, hunting and gathering on vast public lands, paying the pickers, but not the owners. The public gains nothing, but loses nothing. Pick that morel today and it starts growing back within two or three days. Another mushroom in the making.