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“We envision a healthy planet in which Fungi are recognized as the interconnectors of nature.”

– Fungi Foundation 

 

Fungi Foundation is a non-profit organisation which was set up by Giuliana Furci in Chile. The mission is clear – to conserve fungi. “In 2010, she took an even bigger step: Allied with other environmental nonprofits, Furci put forward a proposal for the Chilean government to systematically assess how large new developments such as housing, dams, and highways affect fungi. In 2012, the motion passed and Chile became the first country in the world to protect fungi by law.” (text from here)

 

Giuliana Furci collecting mushrooms in the Tierra del Fuego Province, Argentina. Visual: Courtesy of the Fungi Foundation

 

“Fungi face an additional challenge. After decades of being classified as plants, in the late 1960s, biologists recognized that they needed their own separate kingdom. But this recognition has been slow to seep into policy.

In response, a small team of fungal experts and legal scholars have banded together to try and tilt public and legal discourse in favor of fungal conservation. The team aims to add another “F” — funga — to upcoming high-impact reports, declarations, conventions, and treaties that would otherwise focus on “flora and fauna.” Emboldened by this momentum, Furci and Mueller have joined with legal experts to push for fungi-related language in important biodiversity reports, documents, treaties, and conventions. Adding a third F, they hope, will help build the necessary political leverage for a legal roadmap that would directly protect fungi in the long run.” (text from here)

 

“I have followed the work of the Fungi Foundation in Chile since its conception. Not only have they helped change Chilean law to recognize fungi as essential organisms in evaluating ecosystems before development, but their influence has spread worldwide.” – Paul Stamets

The Fungi Foundation´s work includes the following:

  • Conservation – Campaigns for the protection of fungal habitats
  • Expeditions – Exploration, discovering, and cataloging the fungal diversity of the last wild places on Earth
  • Education – Online resources for educators to teach kids about fungi and their impact and reach
  • Elders – Documentation, mapping, and celebrating of the ancestral relationship between humans and fungi
  • Artistic Research – Explorations across disciplines to support the creation of a new mycological paradigm

 

Watch the short film by Mateo Barrenengoa below. In it, Giuliana Furci teaches us the beauty and importance of fungi ecosystems and, at the same time, delves into decomposition and its relevance in the world:

 

 

Funga also recommends the 3o minute BBC sounds episode – The Food Chain. The BBC is “joined by biologist Merlin Sheldrake in the United Kingdom, author of ‘Entangled Life’, Giuliana Furci, mycologist and founder of the Fungi Foundation, the world’s first non-governmental organisation for the protection of fungi, based in Chile and Danielle Stevenson, a mycologist looking at soil toxicity in the United States.”