The project JoNeF, that means Joint Network  for wild Fungi, presented in November 2022 by ISPRA to IMPEL (European Union Network for the Implementation and Enforcement of Environmental Law), was approved by the General Assembly on 8^th June 2023.

The project started in July 2023 and will end in December 2024.

ISPRA is the Project Leader and will contribute with 4 staff units. At the moment the project involves 21 European countries, but other member states or institution may be involved, with the aim of creating a network of stakeholders interested in the knowledge and conservation of macromycetes in Europe.

In recent years, the awareness of the need to include the Fungi Kingdom into European environmental policies, on a par with Animals and Plants, has grown, in order to protect these organisms in their habitats. Therefore, JoNeF’s main goal is to integrate Fungi into biodiversity monitoring plans, in the European legislation on nature protection and in decision-making processes, to implement a comprehensive conservation strategy.

In this context, the project aims to establish common procedures for the census and monitoring of macromycetes in Europe as a basis for the development of homogeneous data collection activities in the EU.

National environmental institutions and Ministries can coordinate these activities, involving mycological associations, private entities and universities in the collection of data. The IMPEL Network is the right place to work together for institutions that are implementing their national Fungi monitoring systems or intending to do it. With this spirit JoNeF was born.

CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity,1992) is the main legislative driver for JoNeF, while non-legislative drivers include:

• • activities carried out by the IUCN (International Union for Nature Conservation) through the Fungal Conservation Committee, the Fungal Specialist Group and with the Global Fungal Red List Initiative
  • the FFF – FFF – Fauna Flora Funga initiative for the promotion of Fungi protection, which calls for the replacement of the phrases “Animals and Plants” and “Fauna and Flora” by “Animals, Fungi and Plants” and “Fauna, Flora and Funga”
  • at European level the Council of EMA (European Mycological Association) called “European Council for the Conservation of Fungi – ECCF (ECCF)” that works for the conservation and knowledge of Fungi
  • the letter published in Science by J. Sills “Include macrofungi in biodiversity targets“
  • the open letter of the European Forest Institute (EFI) on 14 December 2022 on the crucial role of Fungi in the conservation and enhancement of biodiversity.

By the end of 2024, the JoNeF project aims to develop a Guidance providing recommendations for a European platform of databases for the census and monitoring of macromycetes, in relation to their habitat, and recommendations for a mobile app for census and monitoring in situ.

Countries are actually involved in the project are 21 (see the map):

• • Albania
  • Croatia
  • France
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • Ireland
  • Italy (Project Leader)
  • Kosovo
  • Latvia
  • Lithuania (follower)
  • Malta
  • Montenegro
  • Netherlands
  • North Macedonia
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Romania
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • UK

JoNeF members include the  Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDIS) and the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN).

The JoNeF project will be re-proposed for a second phase (2025-2027), with the objective of developing macrofungal indicators for forest biodiversity in EU and for the assessment of habitat quality and climate change.

On 29, 30 November and 1 December 2023, ISPRA hosted at its headquarters in Via Brancati 48 in Rome, the working group of international members of the JoNeF project for two meetings, conducted in hybrid mode, and a site visit. In particular, the site visit took place on 30 November: the colleagues of IMPEL and ISPRA visited the Circeo National Park where, together with the collaboration of the Park Authority and the Roman Ecological Mycological Association (AMER), also used the app created by ISPRA for the collection of mycological data within the Network for the study of mycological diversity (NDM). The working meetings were attended by 10 experts and 4 on-line, from 10 European Union countries.

Image gallery of the site visit

Link to the IMPEL JoNeF webpage