Mycelium – The Magic of Mushrooms

Hello and welcome to this week's Wildlife Matters podcast with me, Nigel Palmer.

In this edition, we're going to be looking at the environmental devastation that's taking place on our grouse moors around the UK and looking into the magic world of mycelium with the magic of mushrooms.

And that's all coming up right after this week's nature news.

We're looking at a shocking incident that happened over this weekend when a huntsman rode his horse at a monitor and made threats about killing him.

This all happened on Saturday, January 7, when Shaun Stant, who is a monitor with Cheshire monitors, was looking out over the Wednesday hunt near Malpas in Cheshire.

On the tape made by Shaun, you can hear the huntsman swearing profusely, telling Shawn to f off.

That's my effing job.

Don't effing do that again or I'll effing kill you.

Nice.

Just shows what sort of people these hunts people really are.

Sean's a volunteer with action group Cheshire monitors, but he feared being trampled when the huge cult canted up to him as he tried to put the hounds off.

A foxy is set, but he only twigged was that the rider had made shocking verbal threats to kill him.

After he later reviewed the foul mouth footage, Sean said it was a bit of a panic.

I tried to remain as calm as I could in the situation, but it all happened very, very fast.

I thought I was going to get hit by the horse.

I thought it was going to trample me.

He was coming at me very fast and I had my arms out in the front of me.

I didn't even really think about it.

It was just a bit of a shock.

It was only later when I thought, hey, that guy threatened to kill me.

I thought I'd watch it back.

Sean added, it was surprising from a huntsman who has never said anything before or interacted with me to suddenly just blow up like that.

I just thought, what the hell?

on Saturday.

He said the hounds kept picking up on a scent.

It's my job when I'm in the field to essentially stop them from obviously picking up on that fox and get in between the hounds and the fox.

I was running with the hounds.

I'd gone through a couple of fields and then the hounds picked up on a hare.

That's when I said in the video, you leave it.

The hare popped up and the hound started chasing the hare.

And after that, that's when he flipped and rode at me and he said he was going to kill me.

Sean was thankfully unharmed during the incident, but he said he was surprised that Huntsman had reacted in such an aggressive manner.

Sean said, we do experience stuff like this quite a bit when we're out in the field.

They get advised not to interact with sabs because essentially they will incriminate themselves.

I've been doing the win stay for a while and he's never said a word to me before, so that was more of a shock than anything else.

The fact that he's broken his commitment to his silence.

He's obviously very, very riled by what I'm doing, stopping him being able to hunt how he wants to.

We have asked both the Wednesday hunt and Cheshire Police comment, but both have currently declined to comment.

There's no surprise there.

We would like to say a huge thank you to Shaun and great respect for the work he does and for the Cheshire monitors and other groups.

So that has been this week's nature news for wildlife matters.

Coming up next, wildlife Matters investigates the environmental devastation on our grouse moors.

Hello, welcome back.

This week on wildlife matters investigates, we're going to be looking into the environmental devastation that's taking place on our grass moors.

Estate owners and shooting associations are very quick to make huge claims about how the work they do benefits the moorlands and the local environment.

But what they don't mention is that they are paid huge, huge subsidies by our government.

Yes, your taxpayer money to maintain.

Bye.

Biodiverse.

Habitats and ecosystems that should be rich in flora and fauna.

But this isn't what they are doing.

No one really seems to know exactly, but land managed for shooting grouse seems to occupy somewhere between ten and 18% of Scotland, and huge areas of northern England are given over to it, too.

Whatever it is, it's an awful lot of land and it's land that is very far from being natural.

These fast swathes are managed to encourage as many red grouse as possible.

The success of a grouse shooting estate is measured by its bag.

That is the number of grouse shot in a season.

The bigger the bag, the more prestigious the estate is the to be by those who get their kicks from killing wild animals.

What they're doing is creating a monocultural environment based on heather and for the benefit of just one species, red grouse.

The so called traditional management of the land consists of burning and vegetation control.

Now, traditionally, moorland was burning on a 30 year rotation and that used to create a mosaic of different habitats.

Due to the intensity of the grouse being raised to be shot for this so called spore, this rotation is now under ten years and dropping fast.

There are several ways for estates to ensure that there are as many grouse as possible.

One approach is to try and make sure that they don't get sick before they can be shot.

This is done in a couple of ways.

Firstly, medication is liberally scattered across the moors in a bid to stop the grouse from getting worms that can kill them.

They are often in medicated grit trays.

Grouse use grit to aid their digestion, but there is a worryingly high incidence of the grit being simply scattered into piles.

Ironically, there is also scientific evidence that these grit stations can actually aid the disease transmission in grouse, as they attract multiple birds to the same.

The second approach has no science at all to support it, because, according to the scottish government figures, the shooting estates kill an average of 26,000 mountain hares.

Because they believe that mountain hare can either transmit disease to grouse, or, depending on which gamekeeper or estate you talk to, that the mountain hares overgraze the heather.

There's not enough left for the grouse.

Neither of these things are true.

The grouse Moor Management review group could find no scientific basis for these beliefs.

Once again, no one really knows, or seems to even be looking.

But one thing is for sure that Scotland's iconic mountain hare is in danger of becoming extinct in certain areas.

Another approach the estates use to ensure the maximum number of grouse are available to be shot is that they attempt to eradicate any predator that could predate or reduce their grouse numbers.

This means foxes, stoats, weasels, crows and ravens.

But they're all ruthlessly targeted with traps and snares.

Incredibly, this mass slaughter of native wildlife is legal under a general licence, easily applied for online and with little or no scrutiny.

The methods the estates use to kill native wildlife are cruel, slow and barbaric.

They use stink pits that are holes in the ground full of dead and rotting animals to attract wildlife to a ring of snares that surround the pit.

For those that don't know, snares are wild devices intended to trap, but not to kill, their targets, usually foxes.

The snare is designed to hold the animal around the neck until a gamekeeper comes along to shoot it.

Incredibly, it's still legal for a fox to be snared for up to 24 hours.

Foxes have been found suffering horrendously with deep neck and often leg wounds.

No, snares don't always catch animals around the neck, it's very often around the leg.

And due to the discriminate nature of snares, protected animals like badgers or even pet cats and dogs have been found trapped in them.

Dead stoats and weasels are targeted by spring ported that are supposed to kill outright.

These spring traps are often placed on poles laid over watercourses, deceptively luring the stoats and weasels into the deadly trap.

Much of the press coverage has featured the killing of raptors or birds of prey.

All uk raptor species are protected by law and it is an offence to kill them.

However, golden eagles, hen harriers, buzzards and many other satellite tag raptors apparently disappear from the satellite tracking systems, remarkably, in close proximity or even on grouse moors.

The mysterious absence of protective birds and the suspicious disappearance of satellite tag birds was one of the driving forces behind the Scottish Government commissioning the grouse Moor Management review group.

There are also environmental impacts within the circle of destruction that surrounds the grouse moors.

To encourage higher grouse numbers by providing them with optimum conditions, enormous areas of Scotland are set on fire each year.

This burning results in soil loss, increased carbon emissions, loss of soil nutrients, soil productivity and acidification of rivers.

It is also one of the major factors in the absence of trees.

On grouse moss, you see trees get in the way of the shooters and provide convenient lookout positions for birds of prey.

The increased burning of the old heather leaves a huge patchwork of areas where rainwater, rather than soaking into the traditional moorland and peat bogs, can only run off the surface.

This, along with the straightening of rivers for the agricultural benefit, are the real reasons why we have seen such a dramatic and devastating increase in flooding in many of our rural towns and villages, as the river and flood protection system simply cannot cope with the deluge running off the hills.

Critically, these malls supply up to 70% of the UK's drinking water that was filtered through the peat bogs.

The management of the land for grouse and heather includes burning more land more often, including protective peat bogs.

Peat was a traditional fuel used by crofters for generations.

Peat burns slowly and even underground.

Moors are fired so frequently it destroys the peat bulk habitat and everything that depends upon it.

Whilst peat is an excellent nature carbon store and has a massive role to play in our work to mitigate climate change, the shooting estates are burning peat, releasing previously stored carbon back into the atmosphere.

This reverses the small gains that the UK is making in its attempts for net zero.

But even that, isn't it?

Every one of us is paying higher water bills because the water companies now have to filter our water from the moors, simply because shooting estates burn pit bogs.

Burning causes dissolved organic carbon, or doc?

And discolouration of the water, requiring additional treatments by the water companies.

And yes, you guess who's paying for that, can't you?

The additional treatment, I mean.

Yeah, that's right.

It's you.

It's me.

All of us.

Again, wildlife matters is appalled at the level of taxpayers money that supports the shooting estates and their poor conservation of our rich and diverse natural environment.

When you understand the real costs of subsidies, the impact on our climate, water quality and the increased risk of flooding, the monetary costs are substantial.

But the cost to the native wildlife and the impact on our ecosystems and biodiversity of the upland moorlands is irreparable.

To settle down and relax just for a few moments and enjoy a mindful moment with nature.

And in this week's mindful moment, it's a wading bird that's black and white.

Let's see if you can recognize it.

And so, did you get that sound of an avocet recorded on a recent visit to Scotland?

Now on wildlife matters, let's get on to our main feature of this week's podcast, where we will be looking at mycelium and the magic of mushrooms.

Hello, and welcome to this week's main feature on the wildlife Matters podcast.

And that is the magic of mushrooms, which is mycelium.

So, have you ever looked in your fridge only to find mold all over your bread?

Or that your strawberries have gone all soft and mushy?

Yes, that's happened to me too.

Did you ever wonder what was really happening to your food in the fridge?

If you did, then join me for a meander into the magical world of mushrooms.

What you've been seeing in your fridge are white or cream colored fibers that are called hyphae, but the vegetative structure is called mycenae.

The fruiting body of mycelium is something we will be more familiar with, though mushrooms.

Mycelium is fascinating.

It was on Earth, way before humans, or indeed any landlife form.

So to find out about mycelium, we'll need to take a journey back in time.

So grab yourself a cup of tea as we travel back in time a few billion years.

Okay, now we've arrived at a time on Earth, when single celled organisms have been in our oceans for a long time already, but the land is still a rocky mass with no life.

Around this time, bacteria were developing the ability to use the sun for photosynthesis, a process of converting sunlight into nutrients.

The byproduct of photosynthesis is oxygen, which the bacteria release into the atmosphere, allowing for more complex life to form.

This is known as the cambrian explosion.

Now, let's take a quick jump forward.

Just 60 million years this time, and more complex life forms have now developed on land in the shape of fungi.

They have the unique ability to eat rock.

Yes, eat rock.

Okay.

To say fungi could eat rock may have been a slight exaggeration.

What the fungi actually did was to secrete a digestive enzyme that gave them access to the nutrients in the rock, nutrients not available to any other organism at that time.

Before this, fungi fed on the buildup of bacteria on the seashore for millions of years, as there was nothing else on earth for them to eat.

Over time, the oxygen released by mycelium encouraged the development of other life forms.

Plants began to grow and photosynthesize energy from the sun.

Small plants, such as liverworts establish themselves, but they needed nutrients and minerals to spread ever wider.

Mycelium needed energy, so both had access to the needs of the other.

So nature's first mutually beneficial partnership began.

And today we know this as symbiosis.

Nature works symbiotically in natural harmony.

As plants die, the fungi decompose the dead plant material into nutrients and returned those nutrients to other plants.

Plants provided the mycelium underground with the energy they had photosynthesized from the sun.

As more plant species began to grow, they released even more oxygen into the atmosphere.

This symbol, mebiosis, continues even to today.

Mycorrhizal networks continue to evolve, with scientists claiming that these networks benefit up to 90% of plant growth in the modern world.

Plants and fungus have shared a long term symbiotic relationship that's been so successful that plants and fungi have colonized in every area of the world.

Scientists have found them in Antarctica, and mycorrhizal networks have even been discovered at Chernobyl and Hiroshima.

Having survived the nuclear explosions, I first heard of mycorrhizal networks as a child.

One day, whilst walking in my local woodland, I saw a young SAP.

It was shaded by many other much, much larger trees, and I wondered, how can that young sapling ever grow enough to become a big tree and keep the woodland growing?

Into the future.

What I didn't understand then led me on a journey of discovery and a passion to live in harmony with the natural world.

As I discussed discovered more about nature.

I learnt about fungi's mycorrhizal network and how it steps in to feed the smaller trees with the nutrients that they need and keep supporting them until the trees are strong enough to survive and become the future of that woodland.

For me, that nurturing and care that helps every living thing to grow and to be a part of a symbiotic and diverse ecology ecosystem is a way of living that we humans should emulate.

Today, mycorrhizal networks are everywhere, not just in woodlands and our gardens.

Mycorrhizal networks also act as communication networks, sending signals to the trees and plants that could warm for potential dangers in the form of pests and disease.

And the mycorrhizal networks pass on chemicals that deter or hinder the growth of competing plants by depriving them of nutrients.

Mycelium is a cornerstone of our ecosystems, forging relationships with other organisms, including us humans.

For us, it's an important food source, providing us vegetables, fruit and the yeast we need for bread.

It's used in many medicines, agriculture and as a leather substitute in vegan friendly clothing.

Mycelia reproduction happens when a spore germinates to form a type known as a homochiratic mycelia.

When two monochroa come into contact with each other and if conditions are right, the hyphal walls break open in a process known as hyphal anastrosmosis.

Mycelia reproduction happens when a spore germinates to form a type known as a homocaroptic mycelia.

When two ammonocharons come into contact with each other, and if the conditions are right, the hyphal walls will break open in a process that's known as hypho anastomosis.

This allows for the nuclear of one monochron to move into the mycelia of the other.

As the mycelium continue growing and spreading in the or on the surface of the substrate, it absorbs nutrients that are then transported to support the reproduction in the fruiting bodies that we know as mushrooms.

Mushrooms, like plants, need external stimuli to develop.

However, mycelium grows in ever expanding circles under the soil.

As the mycelia deplete the nutrients in the inner part of the circle, they die, leaving an empty central area, whilst the younger mycelia continue to develop a never ending cycle of new circles.

Mycelia release different types of enzymes in their environment to break down materials into simpler forms that they can easily absorb.

For example, complex sugars and proteins are broken down to their basic forms of glucose and amino acids.

Mycelia will naturally grow towards water or areas of high moisture concentration to absorb the water they need for sustained development.

In this way, mycelium can spread anywhere there is soil with sufficient nutrients to support its continued growth.

Mycelium in the ecosystem.

Fungi play a vital role in our ecosystems.

This is because of their ability to recycle nutrients through decomposition and then to make the nutrients available again to other plants.

There are many species of fungi that do their work in different ways.

Most can be classified in one of three parasitic, saprophytic or microsial.

Parasitic fungi, as the name implies, require a living host to consume.

This can lead to the eventual death of the plant or tree.

Saprophytic fungi live on dead organic matter.

They recycle nutrients through decomposition.

Some fungi can be both parasitic and saprophytic.

The cultivated mushrooms you and I find in our supermarkets are saprophytic species.

For me, though, it's the microsial fungi that really demonstrates the magic of mycelium.

Mycorrhizae in latin means, well, mycoat means fungi and rhiza means root.

This relates roughly as fungus root, a description that dates back as far as the 19th century.

Let's take a look at mycelium in the modern world and climate change.

So could mycelium help save the planet from climate change?

Well, yes, it could.

Mycelium acts as a carbon storage facility and will reinvest the carbon into plants.

The relationship is so prevalent that scientists believe up to 90 92% of all plants form a mycorrhizal relationship in the soil.

Woodlands are one way of offsetting carbon from the climate as they act as natural carbon sinks.

Britain was once a gigantic forest, but now, tragically, we have the least woodland cover in the whole of Europe.

This will be a massive factor in how we are able to deal with climate change into the future.

It is believed that this will be achieved by returning farmland to woodlands, mycelium and people, or our relationship with mycelium.

Well, mycorrhizal networks play a vital role for us too.

In fact, life as we know it would not be possible without mycelium networks.

We utilize mycelium to develop higher growth rates in cereal crops, vegetables and fruits to enable seeds of plants to germinate faster and more reliably, and also for those seeds to be stronger and more resistant to pests and diseases, as well as providing reliable, strong crops that do not need fertilizers and spraying with chemicals.

The use of mycorrhizal fungi in soil improves the transfer of water, the trapping of carbon and nitrogen, and helps to reduce the buildup of impact of climate change on our planet.

With so many species of fungi still to be discovered, the possibilities of mycelium and its natural networks and its symbiotic relations to benefit the natural world we live in appear endless.

These tiny fibrous life forms that can be found in your own garden but have survived for billions of years even through nuclear explosions, must surely have a key role to play in the future of our planet.

So next time you're walking in your local woodland or park and you see some mushrooms, just stop for a moment and appreciate these incredible gifts of nature.

Mushrooms.

They really are magic.

Well, I do hope you enjoyed your journey into the magical world of mushrooms and mycelium.

On next week's Wildlife Matters podcast, I get to take you on a journey, an amazing time that I spent watching a sparrowhawk family for a whole year.

Yeah, come and join us on the next episode where we're also going to be looking into how woodlands benefit our health and well being.

That's all to look forward to on the next episode.

Don't forget, if you want to get in touch with us, our email address is hello matters.org or you can catch up with our latest blogs on our website, www.wildlifematters.org.

but now this is me, Nigel Palmer, your host, wildlife matters, signing out.