Old Growth Forests and Chaga Sustainability with Garrett Kopp of Birch Boys Chaga

Hi there 🍄 I’m so excited for what’s in store this week! We’re taking a break from the usual format to bring you this exclusive interview with Garrett Kopp, the young visionary behind Birch Boys, Inc. and a pioneer in sustainable forestry and Chaga harvesting, shares his journey with writer Vivian Kanchian.

From a serendipitous discovery in his grandmother's kitchen to leading a national movement for forest preservation, Kopp delves into the symbiotic relationship between old-growth forests, the timber industry, and the medicinal wonders of Chaga. — Shannon Ratliff

Vivian Kanchian: So, I did a little homework before our interview. And your Audubon article about all the wildlife that yellow birch trees support and the symbiotic relationship between Mesima mushroom and woodpeckers really warmed the cockles of my heart – but also made me worried about the fate of these trees that are now being targeted by foresters for cheap wood and pulp products.

Garrett Kopp: It is a very true thing. Yeah, I'm concerned.

VK: I can't imagine not losing sleep when you're so immersed in the forest and have such a deep connection to it. There’s so much at stake.

I recently interviewed Ron Teeguarden of Dragon Herbs, and we were talking about the sustainability issues with Chaga. He mentioned that the longer Chaga grows, the more chemically balanced and medicinal it becomes. As I shared with you during one of our initial calls, I have tended to steer away from talking about or promoting Chaga because of what I'd heard about it being a scarce resource.

And then you and I spoke, and much to my surprise, I learned that you in fact harvest wild tree-borne Chaga, and that in your neck of the woods it is very much sustainable. This conversation turned my whole impression of Chaga and sustainability on its head. Could you talk a little more about this?

GK: I want to really hone in on one part of what you just said, which is that Chaga takes a really long time to grow. That absolutely is true in the sense that the piece of chaga, which is the harvestable part of Inonotus obliquus is an organ called a sclerotia (which is not a mushroom), that only develops over time. It's totally dependent on the age of the tree.

So, you have yellow birch trees that are sometimes upwards of 100 or 200, even 300 years old. White birch trees may only live to be like 80 years old. But the point is that the larger the tree, the older the tree. Those are the types of trees that are going to bear very large old pieces of chaga, because that's how long it takes for the Chaga to span the entire vertical length of the inside of the tree trunk. And that's what Chaga does. I mean, it's a parasite. 

It's fascinating because I just found my second active Chaga fruiting body ever. Basically, Chaga will kill the tree and rip open its bark, and the whole inside of the sapwood of the tree becomes this spore-bearing mushroom.

It doesn't look like a mushroom, but it is a fruiting body. And then the spores come from there, and all these different varieties of moths immediately find it. The larvae then eat the spores, and it all happens very quickly. Within a week it'll totally dry up and be dead and gone, and then you'll just see a dead birch tree.

It takes a lot of attention to detail to notice that it's been killed by Chaga. But sometimes you won't even see the sclerotia. In other words, Inonotus obliquus can invade and kill young upcoming forests (saplings from one to 10 years old) without anyone even being aware, because the Chaga isn't even really visible.

It only develops Chaga when it's in this intense battle with an old growth tree, you know, for years. And that's what makes Chaga so medicinal. So he's right in that one sense, you know… the piece of Chaga I showed you earlier was a 10 year old piece of Chaga, but it doesn't mean that Chaga can't reproduce faster than that.

VK: How can you tell it's 10 years old?

GK: So, they have annual growth rings, and they kind of become obscured as the Chaga gets older, and as you get up higher.

VK:  Wow – amazing! In your opinion, how long does it take for Chaga to become medicinal?

GK: Well, I think that by the time you have harvestable Chaga, it is medicinal. It's just that how much Chaga is there is going to vary, you know. Maybe If it's a small or young tree it will be larger than a football. If it's an old tree… the largest piece of chaga we've ever found was 53 pounds… a single piece of chaga. The medicinal value that that holds is incredible.  And again, that comes only from an extremely old yellow birch tree.

And actually, that's one differentiating factor about where I am located in the world. There's people harvesting Chaga in Alaska and in Russia, and wherever Chaga grows. But here in the Adirondacks, we have yellow birch trees (Betula Alleghaniensis) which are very different from Betula Papyrifera (white birch). And typically, people harvest Chaga from white birch trees.

But white birch trees are a pioneer species, so they are very sensitive to shade. They need total sunlight. They only grow where the forest has been clear cut or where there has been a forest fire… so you have these upcoming forests of white birch trees, that, as the forest ages a little bit, those trees start to die. White birch trees play an important role in Chaga's ability to spread to new areas because they grow faster, and Chaga actually grows faster on white birch trees than it does on yellow birch trees. But the problem is that white birch trees are isolated to certain pockets of the forest and around bodies of water and places where they can get sunlight.

Whereas, yellow birch trees exist at every elevation level in the Adirondacks. Basically, every forest type. And it's a geographically-isolated species. It’s really a Northern Appalachian species, and it's a very important timber species. So I think that is why, here it is a little bit different. We also have a dense amount of fresh water systems. Six thousand rivers, streams, creeks, and ponds… and Chaga loves water.

And I would argue that here in the Adirondacks, in northern New York, or in Maine, in Vermont, and in Ontario, I think that we have a different Chaga. A more dynamic Chaga habitat, because the Chaga that grows on these yellow birch trees is just massive. It's so much larger than I find it on white birch trees, and that makes sense because these trees are 200 years old. White birch trees just don't live to be that age.

And white birch trees are almost always killed by Chaga when it sporulates and produces that fruiting body that will take over the whole trunk. But yellow birch trees sometimes survive, and they will grow in like 3 trunks, or have big massive limbs that split in two. Chaga may just take out one limb, and so that will die, break off and reproduce. And then you might have that tree continue living on.

So, there's a permanent mother tree for Chaga to spread in the Adirondacks. And again, Chaga is kind of invasive. So, in areas where there aren't many trees, or where the trees are susceptible to Chaga, it's not uncommon for it to kill every single birch tree in a certain pocket of the forest. And that doesn't do Chaga any favors in the long run, because then I have to wait until there's more birch trees, and the spores are probably no longer viable by then. So, to be honest, I didn't read your interview with Ron because I don't like to let what other people say influence my opinions on Chaga.

VK: I can really appreciate that. That's a rare quality to have these days. I appreciate that you base your perspective on your own hands on-exposure to Chaga. 

GK: Absolutely. And I think that is really at play here in this conversation with Chaga. Some people think I'm over the top about how passionate I am about this. But the stakes with this conversation are very important, because what people don't realize is that Chaga is one of many species of fungi that is considered a threat to the timber value by the logging industry.

And here in Tupper Lake, my high school mascot is the lumberjack. So, Tupper Lake – the lake this town was founded around has this really flat park, and the Raquette River flows in and out of Tupper Lake in both directions, spanning like a hundred miles. Tupper Lake was historically used in logging runs. In the spring, all the logs would be pushed into Tupper Lake… flooding the lake, and then they would load all the logs onto trucks. This is why I'm grateful for growing up here because we have all these connections with loggers where I lease 220,000 acres of timberland and do our Chaga harvesting. Where else in the world could I do that?

But you know, I see it with my own eyes. And what I can tell you is, whether or not people are harvesting Chaga – there's something to be concerned about. I'm concerned about Chaga sustainability a lot. I just don't think [the real issue is] Chaga harvesting. On the land that we lease, which we just don't have any control over… you know, it's a matter of sometimes just getting there before the loggers. If we know they're gonna be going to cut trees in this certain area, we know we better go get the Chaga before it gets wasted and crushed. When they cut down the trees, the Chaga just breaks off. 

At one point I thought, “How am I going to try and intercept the Chaga?” Because there's a stage when they're de-limbing the trees where they pile them all up in this big pyramid for the logging truck to come and load it onto the truck.

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