Fungi fans celebrate its recognition as nature's third living kingdom

Fungi fans celebrate its recognition as nature's third living kingdom In short: The Australian Labor Party's national platform now explicitly recognises fungi alongside flora and fauna. Fungi advocates say the recognition is a milestone for conservation and protection. What's next? The ALP could seek to amend federal environment legislation to reflect fungi's new status. Mycelium would not know or care if it was recognised by the Australian Labor Party. Its priority over millions of years has been to work underground in ways that scientists are only beginning to appreciate. But the ALP has a soft spot for mycelium, and all other forms of fungi. At its recent national conference, federal Environment Minister Murray Watt explicitly recognised fungi as part of Australia's natural environment and biodiversity, separate and equal to flora and fauna. "Fungi are vital to our ecosystem, and it is crucial that our environmental and biodiversity frameworks reflect this," Senator Watt told the conference. The recognition follows years of advocacy by mycologists, biologists, ecologists and Australian citizen-scientist organisation Fungimap. They are part of a global network of fungi fans celebrating the recent addition of the word "funga" to the Cambridge Dictionary to describe the third kingdom of living things. FUNGA noun [u] biology, environment specialized All the fungi (=organisms that usually grow on and get their food from decaying material or other living things) that grow in a particular area or a particular period in time ~ Cambridge Dictionary Fungimap committee member Catherine Marciniak, a grassroots ALP member of the Ballina branch in northern New South Wales, was one of the driving forces behind the party's recognition of fungi in its national platform. The revised national platform commits Labor to conserving and restoring "flora, fauna, fungi, oceans and waterways", and could potentially lead to an amendment to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Ms Marciniak said recognition meant fungi would be included in biodiversity assessments, environmental planning, threatened species monitoring and research opportunities. "Our concern was, if it's invisible, then it's not measured, and if it's not measured, it's not conserved," she said. "For instance, we have a critically endangered rainforest right on our doorstep here … [that] has been surveyed for plants and animals, it's been surveyed for butterflies, but it's never been surveyed for a whole kingdom of life. "We have no endangered species listed for fungi, which is madness." Michael Priest, a former mycologist with the NSW Department of Primary Industries and Fungimap president, said fungi played a vital role in recycling nutrients, building healthy soils, carbon storage and supporting the health of up to 95 per cent of the Earth's trees. "They underpin everything that we know of what's going on in our ecosystem," he said. Dr Priest said with about 250,000 species of fungi in Australia and only about 12,000 formally described, there was still much to learn, including potential industrial and medical uses. He said recognising them as a separate type of organism would put Australia in step with many other countries, including Chile and the United Kingdom. "There are more fungi than there are plants, and if you were to take the insects out of the animal kingdom, there'd be more fungi than there are animals," Dr Priest said. "We think that they play an equal role to plants and animals, and so they should be recognised equally."