The Current - The surprising role that fungi can play in the ecosystem

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Conservation advocates at the UN’s biological diversity convention propose that fungi be categorized separately from animals and plants, as they can play a significant role in protecting the environment.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Flora and fauna and fungi, when it comes to the natural world, scientists have historically divided organisms into two broad categories, plants and animals. But experts say mushrooms, molds and yeast deserve their own category and protection. Fungi are on the agenda this week at the United Nations 16th Convention on Biological Diversity in Cali, Colombia. The UK and Chile are putting forward a joint proposal calling for fungi to be placed along animals and plants as a separate biological realm. Juliana Forci is a mycologist, that's someone who studies fungi, and the chief executive of the Fungi Foundation, which helped push

for this. Good morning. Good morning. Juliana, when a lot of us look at mushrooms, we think, well, that's a plant, of course. What's wrong with that idea? Well, fungi have been categorized as an independent kingdom of life since 1969, without any doubt. What's happening at the moment isn't a call for the fungi to be recognized as separate organisms just in science. It's a call for fungi to be recognized as a separate kingdom of life in legislation, policies, and agreements,

because their difference scientifically is undoubted. Fungi have a different type of cell than a plant and than an animal, and they obtain their energy in a different way. And that's not in question. But fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants. When life starts changing as evolution occurs, there's a common ancestor called the opisthocont, which then split up in a way to give life to the kingdom of animals and the kingdom of fungi. Wow. So you've pushed hard for this pledge for fungal conservation that is on the agenda now at COP16. What's the idea behind it? So basically, we've been designing

conservation frameworks and designing ways to halt biodiversity loss, looking just at plants and animals as the components of macroscopic life on earth. And we've never included in these strategies on a global level, the fungi or fungi, you can say them any way, by the way, which are organisms that connect everything, that connect plants to animals, you know, animals to bacteria, etc. So what we're doing now is proposing that countries start including fungi in their conservation frameworks to be able to look at nature in a holistic way. Why though? Are there examples of fungi that are endangered and need this protection? There are hundreds of species that are endangered that

have been evaluated by the IUCN Red List, just like plants and animals. Some are critically endangered, some on the verge of extinction. Fungi face the same threats as plants and animals, but they don't have the same type of protections as plant and animals in international legislation. So they're not included under the typical conservation regulations that countries have to abide by? Precisely, and that's exactly why the UK and the Republic of Chile are calling for them to be included. Most legislation refers to nature as animals and plants,

or fauna and flora and sometimes as microorganisms. But fungi are neither fauna or flora and they are certainly more than just microorganisms. So they are explicitly actually excluded from all these policies and their protection therefore is neglected. Juliana, what types of fungi are endangered? Could you give us an example? So there are some lichens that are endangered. Lichens are organisms that are symbiotic. They are made up from a fungus and an algae, but they are studied and they are categorized under the kingdom of the fungi. There are some mushrooms, for example, a close relative of the oyster mushroom that is also endangered.

And there's a very, very emblematic example of a fungus that looks like a porcini mushroom that is from Chile and that is critically endangered and is very, very important to the indigenous cultures of the southern cone of the Americas. So there are many of them, as I said before, hundreds of species that are in some kind of conservation category on a global level and sometimes on national levels in their red lists. What's causing the fungi to be endangered? So fungi are subject to the same threats as plants and animals. Climate change, habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, over-harvesting, use of pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers. So they are not different from plants and animals in that sense. It's just that their protection is not included in the frameworks that protect plants and animals. So if this pledge gets adopted at COP16, what would it do sort of in concrete terms to protect the fungi you're talking about? So as I mentioned before, fungi are the organisms that connect all sorts of beings in ecosystems.

Fungi actually make a system an ecosystem. And therefore, by looking at nature without the fungi, it's like being a doctor who has to diagnose and treat without ever having used a blood test. We're introducing and we're proposing the use of a new fundamental and essential quote unquote tool to be able to diagnose what's happening to our planet and to be able to treat and design ways forward for a better planet. And what's the resistance? Well, there is actually no resistance, to be honest, and that's the beauty of it. It's not that fungi have been proposed to be included as a new kingdom of life

in legislation, policies and agreements, And that that's been rejected. It's just that it's never happened before that countries come together with an NGO and with a coalition of organizations that are putting forward this, this motion and supporting the governments in doing this. So it's actually, in my opinion, a total no brainer, as one would say. Chile, I understand, has taken steps to protect fungi already. So what have they done? In Chile, every environmental impact assessment has to include a fungal baseline study. So when you're looking to give a permit, for example, to build a

dam or to build a highway, you don't only have to look at the impacts on plants and animals, but also the impacts on fungi and animals, but also the impacts on fungi. And that's extremely important. And it's important for many reasons. I think, you know, one of the most relevant of which is that if you find that there's going to be an impact on an animal, you can take that animal to a zoo and you can, or you can breed the animal elsewhere. If there's impact on an endangered plant, you can probably take that plant and plant it somewhere else, have nurseries, take it to a botanic garden.

But fungi are mostly inseparable from their habitats. And so if there's an impact proven on an endangered fungus, then you have to protect the habitat and the ecosystem in order to protect the species. And are those the types of things that you would expect other countries to copy if this goes forward? I think countries more than copy, I think what we're calling here in the pledge, what the governments are calling for also is for there to be a search for including that measure, but also looking at other measures that can help us really just get out of this environmental crisis we're in. And so one of them for sure would be

including, I hope, would be including fungi and environmental impact assessments. But there are others, like for example, designing the global strategy for fungal conservation together with mycologists, governments and others, and really looking and putting the effort into finding a way forward that is an ecosystemic approach to nature and not just this compartmentalized legislation that looks at just plants, animals and others as components and never really looks at systems like ecosystems. And Juliana, what do you think is at stake if fungi is not protected, conserved more? Well, in my mind and in my work, what is pretty clear, and I think there's quite a big consensus on this, is that the way that we've been looking at biodiversity and habitat protection and conservation frameworks today is not working. And so what this move and what this proposal does really, in my mind, brings hope. What it's going

to do is bring a new way forward into how we can start looking at nature. What we're doing now is really putting forward the availability, the possibility to have this diagnostic and treatment tool, like a blood test to a doctor, but for nature by including fungi in conservation frameworks. Well, you've certainly given us a whole new way to think about mushrooms. Thank you so much, Juliana. Thank you very much. Juliana Forci is the chief executive of the Fungi Foundation. Along with their international counterparts,

many Canadian scientists are focused on fungal conservation efforts. Alison Walker is a biology professor at Acadia University, director of the E.C. Smith Herbarium. She's also a member of a fungal conservation working group here in Canada. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm good, thank you. What do you think of this push to have fungi recognized at COP16?

I think it's incredibly exciting for Canada and for the world. I think it's the best possible thing that could happen for fungal conservation. And our hope is that it leads to more funding and education for this type of research in Canada. Why is fungi so critical to Canadian ecosystems? Thanks, that's a great question. We have a diversity of habitats in Canada. We have over 700, sorry, 7,000 species of mushrooms that we know of, quite a lot more that we don't know yet. And so it's a really important moment for Canada because we actually have a data set now from all the provinces and territories where we have compiled what we do know. And we can take that forward and

start this process of red listing and determining which ones are indeed threatened in Canada. And that's a monumental effort. We need more people on the ground helping with that. But it's an incredibly exciting opportunity because we do have special habitats here in Canada. We have old growth forests. We have sand dunes, boreal habitats, all with their unique vegetation and unique fungi that warrant further exploration. Can you imagine the Canadian landscape without so many, 7,000 species or more of fungi? What would it look like? Well, I tell my students at Acadia we would be buried alive in dead stuff because fungi are these crucial decomposers. And so they're very important at taking nutrients and recycling them back into the ecosystem so that other organisms can grow and survive, the plants and animals.

back into the ecosystem so that other organisms can grow and survive, the plants and animals. So without fungi, we wouldn't have these systems, they wouldn't function, and we wouldn't have plants on Earth, in fact, without fungi. So they're very much underappreciated, and we need to learn more. I'm curious, why do you think they're underappreciated? I think they have a reputation that, you know, as being fairly disgusting, fairly problematic in terms of food spoilage, disease, rot, decay, when the flip side of that is they are performing a vital service for everything else on earth. And so I think it's time to flip the narrative and start to appreciate what they're doing for us. They're often unseen because they're underground or they're growing in a log somewhere we can't see what they're doing, but they are

without a doubt, very, very important. And any of us who've walked in a forest and seen the different kinds are amazed really, aren't we? I know your research involves field work to go out and document the species. How much do we really know about the variety of fungi that are out there in the world and the actual role that each of them plays in the ecosystem? We can discover new species in our backyard. So there is incredible diversity out there that's never been described. There are no names on many of these fungi. And so with my students, we've been able to describe a few new species.

But we know that with those fungi fungi there's also chemical diversity. They can produce potentially new drugs, new enzymes that can be used for a variety of things, breaking down toxins, contaminants, plastics in the environment. So with this undescribed diversity, we have a wealth of bioactive compounds and medicines out there that we desperately need at this time. So without conserving these fungi, we don't know what benefits we might lose. Speaking of benefits, I mean, many people may know that the antibiotic penicillin came from a fungus, as you described. What else are fungi being used for in medical purposes, for example? Yeah, so another classic example is cyclosporine, so a drug that helps the body not reject new organs in terms of organ transplantation. So fungi are involved, primarily thought of as producing antibiotics.

They're being investigated for anti-cancer compounds and other agents that can boost the immune system as well. So there's really no end to the research that's being done right now. So there's really no end to the research that's being done right now. And industrially, they're used to produce important preservatives and chemicals used for all kinds of manufacturing processes. Another area that I know some research is doing is capture and storing carbon. Of course, a big factor in discussions about climate change. What do we know about how fungi plays into that? Yeah, so the estimates currently are that in land systems, terrestrial habitats, that about 30% of the carbon that's being stored can be attributed to fungi and biomass of microbes

like fungi. And so that means they're incredibly important in all different types of habitats right now, being able to aid in that sequestration of carbon dioxide and storing it long-term in soil and in the fungi themselves, and hoping to keep it there to slow down the rates of global warming. 30%. That's quite surprising. I mean, I wouldn't think there would be that much fungi out there. Well, it's really surprising when you think about it, but the tiny microscopic threads of the fungus, so the hyphae or mycelium in the soil can actually, there's estimates, there's kilometers of this in a gram of soil. So it's really microscopic and fine, but it's so abundant that most of the soil itself is actually living. It's a living thing is another way we can think about it.

How much research is going into that, trying to quantify capturing and storing carbon, because it's such a big issue today? It is, and it's really increasing in terms of research efforts in this area. I work a lot in coastal wetlands, such as salt marshes, and that is a big black box there because we know these habitats can store a lot of carbon. There's a slow rate of decomposition there because they're waterlogged, low oxygen. But with increasing sea temperatures, changes in ocean pH, changes in nutrients in the ocean, they can actually start to release carbon and become a source of carbon dioxide, which we don't want release carbon and become a source of carbon dioxide,

which we don't want. So there's a lot of interest and research going on in that area now. Just wrapping up our discussion, Alison, are there other ways that fungi play a role in our day-to-day lives that we don't even think about or realize? Yes, absolutely. So fungi are part of the human microbiome that we think about in our guts and other animals as well, helping us to break down the food that we eat. Fungi are involved in making the foods that we eat, like soy sauce and blue cheese and wine and beer and cider that we enjoy. So they intersect with our lives in many ways. They cause a lot of food spoilage of items in our fridge and in agriculture, And they're being explored for

biocontrol potential against pests in forestry and agriculture as well. So some fungi are very specific to a certain insect or even another pest fungus, and they can be used as a more natural alternative to chemical pest control. Alison, thank you very much. Thanks so much. Alison Walker is a biology professor at Acadia University. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons,

but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. As we heard, mushrooms and fungi are potentially helpful in all sorts of practical ways. In British Columbia, one environmental organization has been looking into using fungi to help clean up old railway ties and to break down bush and brush and wood waste without burning it. Anissa Watson is the Director

of Program Execution with the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition. She's in Hazleton, BC. Hello. Good morning. Let's start with those railway ties. What's the problem you're trying to solve here? Yeah, so CN Rail has a long history of leaving discarded railway ties along waterways in our area, in the Skeena region. And our concern with that is the immense contamination that can come out of them and leach into the soil, water, and eventually into wildlife.

They're large, large piles of ties lining the Skeena region. And so if there's a wildfire, those will burn up and that releases all of the toxic chemicals back into the airway as well. So we got kind of curious about this and started to do some research around utilizing fungi for mycoremediation, which is the practice of using mushrooms essentially to break down, bind or remove contaminants in soil and water. So we wanted to see what could happen with creosote. And so what we did is we worked with a local Skeena mushroom farm here and did a little pilot testing out three different types of fungi, oyster mushroom, chicken of the woods, and turkey tail, to try to see if we could train the mycelium, so the little

sort of roots, that's how I think of them, the roots of the mushrooms to consume and digest the creosote in the ties. So in a lab experiment, this looked like, you know, doing this in petri dishes. And what we found was that turkey tail mushroom had the most significant reduction in chemicals in the creosote. And so what happens is the mushrooms will sort of break down these larger hydrocarbon chains in the chemicals into smaller ones that then can be processed and used, allowing for microorganisms or plants or whatever to kind of get to work to break them down. And so what we found with the creosotis was that we had some success with turkey tail, and we were actually able to notice a significant reduction in the

chemicals. Do the turkey tail mushrooms actually move toward something to feed them? Like how do they actually consume something that's on a railway tie? Yeah, so what we found, what we used was a very, very small in our lab, a very small chip of creosote and like, you know, kind of broke it down into a dust. So it was as small as possible. And the mycelium, they need food. We know mushrooms need food to survive. So they went towards that creosote. So they wanted to sort of consume it as a food for themselves. And so what we're doing now is now that we've done this lab testing uh now we need to see like how can we

do this on a larger scale what would be the safest and most effective way to um myceliate these creosote ties in a way that the turkey tail can then grow on them and start to break it down so what it what the turkey tail will do is it will um eventually it'll go move into the creosote and then it uptakes and starts to break down those chemicals inside of it so that's what we know so far and what we've done is we've taken this strain of turkey tail that we've kind of like trained to want to eat the creosote and we've cultivated it so then when we move next spring into doing outdoor installations then we've got a type of turkey tail mushroom that's like excited to go towards the creosote. That's partial to creosote. Wow. Fascinating.

You're also looking at mushrooms to deal with wood waste. What have you found there? Yeah. So it's a process called cold fire, essentially. And so we know that mushrooms especially saprophytic mushrooms like to break down the carbon cells in plant cell structure so they'll go in and they'll start to break it down and then they store it. So what we've done is started to work with a local community here to test out how to deal with waste wood. So we're looking at waste wood left over from forestry practices, large piles, breaking that down and then inoculating or myceliating that with fungi to help to break down the process of this wood so we don't have to burn it, essentially. Why not burn it, though? It seems like a complicated process when there is a way to get rid of wood waste.

like a complicated process when there is, you know, a way to get rid of wood waste. Yeah, so our concern about burning the wood waste is the amount of carbon it releases into the atmosphere, along with the impact that that high intensity heat from burning slash piles can have on the soil around it. The other thing is all that carbon gets released into the atmosphere, so none of it gets stored back into the soil, whereas the mushrooms will break that down and store it back into the soil. So it holds it in there. What are the biggest challenges when you're looking at doing these experiments, trying to understand how mushrooms can help our ecosystems? How do you create buy-in for these new ways of doing things? So what we've found is buy-in on the community level is 100%. People are interested, people are happy to find solutions, and there's already a connection here with mushrooms

culturally. So it's something that people are already understanding as like a useful tool in our ecosystem. Where we're having some troubles getting larger buy-in is from policymakers, government and things like that. The people who make the policies around how to deal with the wood waste. So that's one of our challenges. The other challenge is how do we scale this up on a large enough scale that we can actually look at slash piles and actually effectively deal with them using fungi? So you've got some work to do ahead, as you mentioned, in the spring. Absolutely. Yeah, we're excited to continue to do this work. We're really happy that we were able to do some tests earlier this year and get the community interest and the community buy in.

So we're excited for next year when we get to do larger installations. And so we heard from our other guests how passionate they are about mushrooms. It sounds like you are too. Yeah, I've just started actually to learn more about this and recognizing the really critical role they play in a healthy, vibrant ecosystem. So it's like getting your mind blown. Like really, when you start to dig into the knowledge that fungi hold and the work that they do in our environment, it's really incredible. So they really are a critical species for us. And here we thought it was magic mushrooms that only blew our mind,

and you've got all these other applications. Absolutely, yeah. Thanks, Anissa. mind, and you've got all these other applications. Absolutely, yeah. Thanks, Anissa. Yeah, thank you. Anissa Watson is Director of Program Execution with the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.