Emerging Threats to Wild Mushrooms:


Global Climate Change, Habitat Loss, and Invasive Species … and Success Stories Britt A. Bunyard


Refugium: (noun) an area of relatively unaltered climate that is inhabited by plants and animals during a period of continental climatic change (such as a glaciation) and remains as a center of relict forms from which a new dispersion and speciation may take place after climatic readjustment.


FIRE MORELS


Not button mushrooms tamed in cellophane not portobello or porcini on a café menu, but after cold, wet weather damps down hot spots— from wild fire, edibles, from ashes, nourishment, from chaos, gifts, morels— Earth flourishes.


Karen Douglass kvdbooks@gmail.com


I


nterest in wild mushrooms and foraging has been on the dramatic uptick in recent years. It seems that


everywhere you look, people are talking about foraging (“Is this edible?” “What is this species?”), joining Facebook pages, and wanting to learn more. Tis is helping to call attention to the importance of our natural areas—no doubt a very good thing. And it’s also brought to light that our natural areas are under stress—some stressors are old but some are recent and emerging ones. It’s likely that, as a lover of wild


mushrooms, the first thing that comes 34 FUNGI Volume 14:4 Fall 2021


to mind when considering stresses to our natural areas is that they’re being loved to death. Too many people heading off into the woods to forage, some for personal use and some for profit. And I’m not just talking mushrooms, just about anything has become the target of “wildcrafters” and commercial harvesters. I’ve personally witnessed the results of overharvesting: western forests raked clean of truffles and Matsutake buttons, vast patches of salal and fern denuded, and stands of Western Cedar stripped of their bark; in the East, forests of birch felled senselessly by Chaga pickers, ramps (a wild leek) has been extirpated from many areas, and freshwater eels all but extinct due their value in markets across the Atlantic. And these are just a few of the dozens, if not hundreds of species of organisms under duress due to their popularity or monetary value. Fears of over-picking our wild


mushrooms have been around longer than I have. And it may be a real threat to some mushrooms that get harvested prior to spore production (e.g., highly prized Matsutake buttons). But there are many bigger threats to wild mushrooms— indeed all organisms. Global climate change. Habitat loss. Invasive species. Loss of biodiversity. Tese are very real threats to the health of the planet and to all life. And that includes us.


Global Climate Change


… and Invasive Species As 2020 came to a close, the United


Nations Secretary General Antonio


Guterres made his annual year-end address to the entire world body. In his speech, he cited all of these problems, challenging world leaders to make 2021 the year that humanity ends its “war on nature,” to curb climate change, and commit to a future free of planet- warming carbon pollution. “Te state of the planet is broken,” Guterres said. “Humanity is waging a war on nature. Tis is suicidal.” Global climate change and its effects


have been studied for decades. Te habitable geographic ranges of species are changing. Some places are becoming inhospitably hotter or wetter/drier, for example. Other places, once too wet/ dry or too cold, are now becoming more favorable. Of course, climate change will leave no favorable habitat for many species that will inevitably go extinct. A changing climate has led to other


observations. Flowering times of many plants have been recorded earlier and earlier, and some plants are now blooming twice in a season. Likewise, mushroom fruiting times are happening earlier in the year with some species. Te rise of social media has allowed us to see such observations, globally and in real-time. Te global climate has been warming


for a long time but humans have drastically accelerated that. Peter Brannen, a Scripps Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder and author of the book Te Ends of the World, about the five prior major mass extinctions, recently wrote in Scientific American about humans and climate change. “At the start of the industrial


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