We are thrilled to announce that Fungimap has been shortlisted as one of three Finalists in the 2022 Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources Eureka Prize for Innovation in Citizen Science, together with our partner organisations Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, and University of Adelaide! The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes are the country’s most comprehensive national science awards, and our shortlisting is a great honour.

Our nomination focussed on our flagship Fungi Down Under and follow up Find our Fungi! projects, which were highly innovative in their target species approach which distilled the great diversity of Australian macrofungi into some distinctive, widespread and easily-identifiable species which citizen scientists could record in the field. Both through these and the Fungimap project more generally, our Australia-wide network of citizen scientists, supported by mycologists and ecologists, were able to observe and map more than 70,000 fungi records, which underpinned the IUCN Red Listing of 15 threatened Australian fungi species, and greatly increased our understanding of Australia’s fungi and their importance in our ecosystems. Our next mission is to make sure Australia’s most threatened fungi species receive protection under the Federal EPBC Act.

The Awards Ceremony will be held on Wednesday 31st August – wish us luck and watch this space!

 

Thanks to all our amazing citizen scientists for your contributions to our project over many years, and to our partner organisations Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board, the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, and the University of Adelaide.

Donate now on the button below to help us nominate our threatened species!