The newly updated IUCN red list for threatened species includes almost 500 new fungi added to the list, totaling 1300, with at least 411 being at risk for extinction. Fungi are most at risk from habitat loss, fragmentation, and pollution. They also hold a key ecological role in recycling organic matter and providing nutrition to the producers at the base of a community. This news highlights the severity of the problems we learned about with species ‘favoritism’ in conservation since although these fungi clearly need our attention, they're less likely to be invested in than other kingdoms of life. As the director general of the IUCN puts it, “Fungi are the unsung heroes of life on Earth, forming the very foundation of healthy ecosystems – yet they have long been overlooked…”. We can also see the issues with species favoritism in the apparent lack of research behind fungi, since it seems more likely that we only just found out about many of these newly threatened species than that the number of threatened species actually grew by such a large portion since the last assessment. In reality, if research was more representative, we'd likely find many more species under threat. When it comes to what actions we can take to protect fungal biodiversity, I think it's imperative to focus on preventing further habitat degradation in important areas and try to keep samples of endangered fungi for ex situ conservation, since restoring lost habitat will be a long term project. As the article explains, many of the threatened species thrive in old growth forest habitats and take a long time to establish their mycelium network, which isn't possible in forests that are harvested for wood. Once these unique habitats are gone, it will take a long time to build them back due to conditions being past an ecological ‘tipping point’ that as we learned, can't be easily reversed.