Fungi could be classed alongside animals and plants as a separate realm for environmental protection under plans drawn up by the UK and Chile.
The proposal, submitted to a UN conference on biodiversity this week, calls for "funga" to be granted a global legal consideration distinct from flora and fauna, and experts say this could change the future path of the planet.
The Fungal Conservation Pledge, which has been submitted to the UN convention on biological diversity at its Cop16 conference in Colombia, argues for the "recognition of fungi" as an "independent kingdom of life in legislation, policies and agreements" so as to "advance their conservation". The pledge urges signatory nations to "adopt concrete measures" that "allow for maintaining their benefits" to ecosystems and people.
The declaration emerged from a collaboration between the UK, Chile and the Fungi Foundation, a non-profit conservation group that has been working for 12 years to "integrate fungi into the highest levels of conservation policy and legislation".
As ever, money is at the heart of the issue. Although fungi represent "16 times more of Earth's biodiversity than plants", conservation efforts receive "less than a third of the funding that plant research does", Dr Toby Kiers, chief scientist at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, told Forbes.
The variety among fungi is "remarkable" and "far wider" than the diversity that exists among plants and vertebrates, according to National Geographic. The organisms are "in us, on us and all around us", and the growing effort to "study and protect our fungal neighbours" may define our "intertwined futures". The "future is funga", so "now is the time to understand what it holds". | 
