The fight for fungi

Fungi could be classed alongside animals and plants as a separate realm for environmental protection under plans drawn up by the UK and Chile.

The proposal, submitted to a UN conference on biodiversity this week, calls for "funga" to be granted a global legal consideration distinct from flora and fauna, and experts say this could change the future path of the planet.

Independent kingdom

The Fungal Conservation Pledge, which has been submitted to the UN convention on biological diversity at its Cop16 conference in Colombia, argues for the "recognition of fungi" as an "independent kingdom of life in legislation, policies and agreements", so as to "advance their conservation". The pledge urges signatory nations to "adopt concrete measures" that "allow for maintaining their benefits" to ecosystems and people.

The declaration emerged from a collaboration between the UK and Chile and the Fungi Foundation, a non-profit conservation group that has been working for 12 years to "integrate fungi into the highest levels of conservation policy and legislation".

As ever, money is at the heart of the issue. Although fungi represent "16 times more of Earth's biodiversity than plants", conservation efforts receive "less than a third of the funding that plant research does", Dr Toby Kiers, chief scientist at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, told Forbes.

The future is funga

Those behind the proposal think fungi get a bad press. Often "stigmatised" as smelly mould or "poisonous mushrooms", these organisms are "essential to life on Earth", said Forbes. The human race ignored the green mould on bread for thousands of years until Alexander Fleming realised this genus of fungus, Penicillium, could be used as an antibiotic, which has since saved many millions of lives. Fungi is also essential for producing everyday products such as bread, cheese, wine and beer.

There is a "growing body of evidence" that fungi play a "crucial role" in maintaining a healthy natural environment, too, said The Guardian, including "remediating soil, sequestering a third of carbon from fossil fuel emissions" and "breaking down plastics and polluting chemicals". In fact, say mycologists – those who study fungi – life on Earth as we know it would not exist without fungi.

Recognition of that pivotal role is an important first step, said an expert at Kew Gardens, which is home to the planet's biggest fungarium, a collection of 1.25 million pressed and dried specimens from around the world. "The science is clear,", said Kew's director of science, Alexandre Antonelli, but it is "a question of social recognition", so we "need to bring fungi into the discussion".

The variety among fungi is "remarkable" and "far wider" than the diversity that exists among plants and vertebrates, said National Geographic. The organisms are "in us, on us, and all around us" and the growing effort to "study and protect our fungal neighbours" may define our "intertwined futures". The "future is funga", so "now is the time to understand what it holds".