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Can Mushrooms Prevent Megafires?
by Stephen Robert Miller, The Washington Post, 7/10/23
Land managers have been hard at work, thinning out a hundred years of forest overgrowth in the Rocky Mountain West. An unintended consequence of this forest health activity are the piles of branches and rubble that remain behind.
What to do with this slash, as it's called, is a topic of concern. It's a fire hazard on its own. A common solution has been prescribed burns, but the risk of a prescribed burn getting out of hand has caused foresters to look to other options.
A newly-emerging idea: mushrooms. Fungus can transform woody debris into nutrient-rich soil. Recent experiments have shown that native fungi can accelerate decomposition, especially of small, wood chip-sized debris.

Can mushrooms prevent megafires? Fungi could turn piles of potential wildfire fuel into soil.