Mycologist Alexis Buxton-Collins tours Tarkine fungi and changes how you think “forest” works

On a three-day fungi workshop in Australia’s largest cool temperate rainforest, Alexis Buxton-Collins unearths an unexpected appreciation for the third kingdom of life. In Takayna/Tarkine, which is revered as one of Australia’s last true wilderness areas, the headline move is simple but disruptive: the “forest” you see is not the foundation. Fungi are.

Buxton-Collins frames the Tarkine as a place of legends, the sort of landscape where you can hear myths and biology in the same breath. The region shelters freshwater crayfish that can reach almost a metre in length in the shade of 2,000-year-old Huon pines. And, every few years, rumours surface that thylacines still prowl the dense Gondwanan rainforest of north-west Tasmania. But the workshop shifts attention to something older than all of it. Before animals walked the Earth or trees began converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, fungi helped create the conditions necessary for complex life on our planet.

This is where Dr Alison Pouliot, a mycologist, puts a stake in the ground. As Buxton-Collins describes inhaling cool air perfumed with the gentle spice of sassafras, Pouliot explains: “People often say that fungi grow in the forest.” The point is rhetorical, but the implication is operational for anyone managing land, ecosystems, or environmental outcomes. Pouliot continues, “But there wouldn’t be a forest without fungi. Fungi are the ecosystem engineers that created the foundation for the forest.” In other words, fungi are not an accessory species. They engineer the substrate and relationships that let forests exist at all.

If you manage forests, rangelands, or biodiversity programs, that framing matters because it changes what “success” looks like. Many policies and funding cycles treat ecosystems like collections of visible assets: charismatic fauna, canopy trees, scenic habitat. Fungi push you to treat the invisible infrastructure as the main system. In Tarkine, the workshop is happening in a world that has sheltered astonishing creatures for 65 million years, but the underlying mechanism is not nostalgia or luck. It is ecology built on fungal networks, decomposition, and the conversion of available resources into living structure.

That also adds weight to why places like Takayna/Tarkine stay politically and commercially relevant even when they seem remote. When a landscape is described as one of Australia’s last true wilderness areas, it is also a real constraint on development and a real opportunity for conservation leadership. The second-order effect is that ecosystems may resist “partial protection.” If your stewardship plan protects a patch of trees but disturbs the soil, deadwood, and fungal habitat that systems rely on, you can end up with a facade. The forest may look intact while the functional foundation is weakened, reducing resilience as conditions change.

There is another practical incentive here for boards and investors who fund environmental programs. When fungi are framed as ecosystem engineers, measurement becomes harder, but it also becomes more rigorous. It pushes stakeholders to broaden monitoring beyond tree counts and animal sightings to include indicators that reflect underground processes. Even in the absence of specific governance details in the article, the logic is clear: if fungi create the conditions for complex life, then ecosystem health and long-term performance likely depend on protecting the processes fungi support.

Finally, the Tarkine story lands as a strategic reminder for any peer working at the intersection of conservation, regulation, and impact. The workshop is only three days, but the lens it offers is long-term. Tarkine’s legendary wildlife, 2,000-year-old Huon pines, and the cyclical rumours of thylacines are all compelling. Yet Pouliot’s core message reframes the “why” behind the spectacle. Complex life is built on groundwork laid by the third kingdom, before forests became forests. If your organization’s mission is to protect ecosystems, the most defensible move is to treat fungi not as background, but as critical infrastructure.