Lottery Grant Award

Heritage Lottery Fund remembers the Forgotten Kingdom of  Fungi.

The Heritage lottery Fund (HLF) has awarded a grant of £26,000 to help increase expertise in fungal identification, it was announced today.

Funding has been awarded to the British Mycological Society for training the voluntary sector and for public outreach work to raise the profile of this forgotten kingdom. Work will start in May with a weeklong training event on an under recorded group "the spore shooters" or ascomycetes, experts from across Europe have agreed to help UK mycologists improve their skills. These UK mycologists, will in turn help train up others, so increasing UK expertise.

Selected areas in South Yorkshire will be scoured during the third week of May. Providing conditions are favourable, it is expected that several hundreds of species will be studied and recorded; improving understanding of their occurrence and distribution. Later in the year the emphasis will be on habitat types. Volunteers will be in Wales studying nutrient deficient grasslands and dune systems. They will be learning to differentiate between some of the commoner species as well as being on the lookout for rarities and possible previously assumed extinct species. Once again two world experts will be on hand to help.

Fungi are often forgotten when it comes to conservation. They are extremely important organisms that perform several major roles. The health of the planet relies on their ability to decompose waste material, and most  plants need them to help provide water and vital nutrients for healthy growth.  When it comes to identification, expert skills are required to identify them. These very specialist skills are now lacking in Britain, so much so that it is a skill which has been described by government reports as at crisis point, with fewer than 10 professional taxonomic mycologists (those that can identify fungi) left in the UK.

Caroline Hobart of the British Mycological Society said "We are absolutely delighted that the Heritage Lottery Fund is funding our training project. Fungi are vital organisms and underpin life on earth. It is crucial that we ensure that the numbers of people with appropriate identification skills is increased. We also need to raise the profile of fungi so that the public understands the pivotal role they play in ecosystems. This award will help us to start to do this, as fungal identification skills are no longer emphasised in most Universities, the voluntary sector must step in to ensure that we know what our fungal heritage is and learn how to preserve it. Only by knowing what fungi we have got, can scientists build on this knowledge to understand the intricacies of how they function and what conditions fungi need to sustain the plants and animals in the food chain".

 Explaining the importance of the award Fiona Spiers, Head of Region – Yorkshire and the Humber said “The heritage sector is in urgent need of people who have specific conservation skills.  This project is vitally important as it will enable people to learn fungal identification skills, and raise the profile of a crucial part of the UK’s natural heritage that is often overlooked.”

For further information please contact

Caroline Hobart
Foray manager
British Mycological Society
0114 2761737
foraymanager@tiscali.co.uk

Notes to Editors

Using money raised through the National Lottery, since 1994 the Heritage Lottery Fund has not only revitalised hundreds of museums, parks, historic buildings, landscapes and wildlife sites, but has also given new meaning to heritage itself. People from every walk of life are now involved with the heritage that inspires them, making choices about what they want to keep and share from the past, for future generations. HLF has supported more than 33,900 projects, allocating over £4.4billion across the UK, including £351million to 2,890 projects across the Yorkshire and the Humber region alone. Website: www.hlf.org.uk