11/08/2026
Funga still isn’t an official term in South Africa 🍄😭
Flora and fauna have had their seat at the table for centuries. Funga (the fungal kingdom) , mushrooms and mycelium and all is still standing at the door. ☹️
Not because fungi matter less. If anything they’re the quiet infrastructure holding the forest together, feeding the soil, breaking down what’s dead into what’s next, linking root to root underground.
But conservation law was written before we understood any of that, and fungi just… never got written in. Still filed under “plants” here, if they’re mentioned at all. 😅
Other countries are already changing the language. The UK, Chile, Iceland, Brazil have adopted “fauna, flora and funga.” Australia’s in the middle of that shift too, pushed by advocacy from Fungimap.
South Africa hasn’t made that move yet. We have SANBI (South African National Biodiversity Institute) they’re the ones behind our Red Lists for threatened plants and animals but there’s still no fungal Red List, and no funga in the official language.
For a country this wild and this fungally rich, that gap feels overdue to close. 👀 I've shared a few pictures here of the amazing fungi I've come across , there's WAAAAY more 🤭
So consider this me saying it out loud:
SANBI, let’s give funga its name in the room too! SANBI
Please help ! Fungimap Fungi Foundation Stephen Axford & Catherine Marciniak
🍄 Fauna. Flora. FUNGA. 🍄
