10/08/2026
🍄 A BIG WIN FOR AUSTRALIA’S FUNGI 🍄
For far too long, we’ve talked about Australia’s biodiversity as flora and fauna.
Something rather important has been missing.
FUNGA.
The Australian Labor Party has become the first major Australian political party to explicitly recognise fungi alongside flora and fauna in its National Platform.
It might look like the addition of one small word.
It is much bigger than that.
Fungi are a whole kingdom of life. They recycle nutrients, build soils, partner with around 90% of plants, help forests withstand environmental stress and contribute to long-term carbon storage. Yet they have historically been largely invisible in the language of conservation.
And language matters.
By putting fungi into the language of its National Platform, Labor has taken an important first step towards a future where fungi are considered alongside plants and animals in biodiversity assessments, conservation, restoration, threatened species programs, environmental planning, research and monitoring.
As Senator Murray Watt said:
“Fungi are vital to our ecosystem, and it is crucial that our environmental and biodiversity frameworks reflect this.”
This is part of a growing global movement to recognise the 3Fs — Fauna, Flora and Funga — and correct a historic omission from the way we understand and protect the living world.
There is still a long way to go. The goal is for fungi to be explicitly recognised wherever plants and animals are named in Australia’s biodiversity legislation, environmental frameworks and planning.
But change has to begin somewhere.
One word has been added.
An entire kingdom has become visible. 🍄
A huge thank you to everyone in the Australian mycological community, Fungimap, the Chief Botanist of South Australia, the grassroots Labor members who championed this change, and Senator Murray Watt for helping take this important first step.
FAUNA • FLORA • FUNGA
Fungi Foundation
Thanks to Stephen Axford Planet Fungi for allowing us to use his photos for our advocacy work.
