Paul Stamets is a former logger turned “mushroom man.” He’s a cutting-edge mycologist, who takes composting into a whole new dimension. “Fungi are the grand recyclers of the planet,” he says. Stamets and his family run a gourmet and medicinal mushroom business, Fungi Perfecti, where he is also pioneering the use of “mycoremediation” and “mycofiltration” technologies. He is discovering how we can cultivate mushrooms to clean up toxic waste sites, improve ecological and human health and even break down chemical warfare agents. Fungi play a key role in the process by which microorganisms convert a variety of organic materials into nutrient-rich soil. They’re dirt builders. Stamets applies this ability to “mycoremediation.” He targets a toxic problem and then seeks the biodiversity—especially when it comes to fungi. Recently, he has identified and tested strains of fungi that are effective in decomposing the deadly biological weapons used species that will be effective in solving the problem. Turning his attention to the antiviral and antibiotic properties of mushrooms, Stamets has just embarked on the first federally funded research project on the curative properties of fungi in battling HIV. We will film this battle against AIDS as it is waged at the microscopic level in a study conducted at San Francisco General Hospital. We will film Stamets in the rainforest as he collects and clones some of the more than 250 strains of wild mushrooms that he stores as living libraries. He promotes the view that our survival as a species will depend on preserving by terrorists and armies. Jane’s Defense Weekly reported that Stamets’ fungal strains were able to “completely and efficiently degrade” chemical surrogates of VX (used by Saddam Hussein on the Kurds) and Sarin (used by religious fanatics in the Japanese subway). Stamets asserts, “We have a fungal genome that is diverse and present in the old growth forests…We should be saving our old growth forests as a matter of national defense!” This man who speaks for the mushrooms is ambitious in his modest and genial way: He would like to be known 300 years from now as the man who replaced every toxic waste dump on the planet with an old growth forest.

Check out Paul Stamets' groundbreaking book: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World ...