AI Insight
A significant portion of Earth's land surface, approximately 17.4%, is designated as protected areas intended to conserve terrestrial biodiversity, with these zones covering roughly one-fifth of the range of terrestrial mammals on average. However, these conservation efforts largely focus on visible, aboveground organisms while neglecting the belowground fungal communities, particularly soil fungi, that form essential symbiotic relationships with plants and underpin the health of terrestrial ecosystems. The article highlights a critical gap between surface-level wildlife protection and the conservation of subterranean biological networks.
Why it matters
The neglect of soil fungal communities in conservation planning represents a systemic oversight that could undermine the long-term viability of the very ecosystems protected areas are designed to preserve. Incorporating belowground biodiversity into land protection strategies may be necessary to ensure the resilience of plant communities and broader ecosystem function.
Governments around the world conserve plants and animals in part by setting aside land. Whether as wilderness reserves or as resource management zones that allow industrial activities such as logging, 17.4% of the planet’s land offers some measure of protection. These protected areas overlap with one-fifth, on average, of the range of Earth’s terrestrial mammals. But beneath these parched deserts, dark forests, and rolling grasslands is an invisible world that keeps these aboveground places healthy. And we’re not protecting that world much at all.
Source: Protected areas that help wildlife often do little for the soil fungi on which plants depend