What about the mushrooms we don’t notice? And how many of them are endangered?

Fungi are key to our survival. Are we doing enough to protect them?

For almost a decade, one lone mushroom was classified as an endangered species, and scientists say more could be in trouble.

When Italian botanist Giuseppe Inzenga first tasted the white ferula mushroom in 1863, he described it as one of the tastiest he had ever had.

Found primarily in Sicily’s Madonie mountain range growing in limestone and at elevations of over 1,000 feet, the prized mushroom is sold for around 50 euros for two pounds.

“This mushroom is really delicious. You can eat it raw and also cooked,” says Giuseppe Venturella, a mycologist at the University of Palermo in Sicily. He compares it to a porcini, notes that it’s rich in B vitamins, and says the best way to experience the taste is eating it raw, with a little olive oil and parmesan cheese.

Fast forward 100 years from Inzenga’s enthusing, and the same mushroom species, still prized for its taste, is now listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, an organization that tracks population numbers for many of the world’s species.

Picking the mushroom is off limits in protected areas inside the Madonie National Park region, but foragers can pluck mature mushrooms, indicated by a cap with sides growing longer than three centimeters, in surrounding regions. Unlike most mushroom species, the white ferula fruits in spring, with its season lasting from April to late May.

The white ferula was the first mushroom to be recognized for the impact humans were having on its survival, and from 2006 to 2015 it was the only one of its kind to be globally recognized as endangered.

“It was so beloved by people in [Sicily] that when the numbers began to decline, it was part of popular conversation,” says Nicholas Money, a mycologist at Miami University in Ohio.

But what about the mushrooms we don’t notice? And how many of them are endangered?

“We think the true biodiversity of fungi is somewhere between one million and six million species,” says Anne Pringle, a University of Wisconsin-Madison mycologist—as fungus experts are called—and a National Geographic explorer. Yet despite their global prevalence, fungi have historically been left out of conservation initiatives.

“Because people eat it,” says Pringle of the white ferula, “they notice and care. There might be more than a thousand stories like that of fungi in trouble that we just don’t know about.”

So how do we conserve organisms we can’t see and don’t understand? And why should we try?

“Life on the planet wouldn’t exist without fungi as we know it,” says Greg Mueller, a mushroom conservation expert and the chief scientist at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Conserving them, Money says, “is an urgent concern because of their relationship with forests and trees. You can’t have the trees without the fungi…. We cannot survive without them. In terms of the health of the planet, they’re incredibly important.”

Full Article: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/fungi-are-key-to-survival-are-we-doing-enough-to-protect-them