Monthly Speakers

With the rise of catastrophic megafires and flooding, we look to fungi and other microbes as nature’s mediators between fire and water. They sink carbon, retain water, prevent erosion, digest contaminants, and establish ecological balance in both pre and post fire ecosystems. As fires enter the human-made environment more regularly, there is a growing concern about post-fire toxic ash, and the consequences of ash-runoff entering the surrounding waterways. Wildfire also provides a unique opportunity to revitalize ecosystems, restore water and maximize nutrient cycling. There is a growing grassroots network with hubs in Colorado, California and Hawaii that seeks to generate fire resilience by allying with fungi and other microbes. CoRenewal's FENiXS program and the Biome Logs Project are evaluating the efficacy of fungal inoculation, with the aim of producing widely applicable tools and methodologies to facilitate ecological regeneration and recovery in the aftermath of disaster and environmental injustice, while honoring and taking inspiration from Indigenous relationships with fire and fungi. In this participatory workshop, we will discuss how to organize and integrate inoculants into land tending practices, as well as how to contribute to community science that supports these efforts. About the Speaker: Maya Elson is a teacher, naturalist, mycologist, organizer and lover of the wild. Maya was the Executive Director of CoRenewal from 2016-2021, where she works to enact effective and just solutions to environmental and social crises by working in collaboration with fungi. She is the co-founder and Program Coordinator of the Post Fire Biofiltration Initiative, an effort and experiment using fungi to prevent toxins from burned homes from entering waterways. Maya is one of the founding members of the Radical Mycology network, and has started Applied Mycology groups in Olympia, WA and the San Francisco Bay area. She’s worked as a campaign organizer with a number of climate justice and wilderness defense struggles over many years. Since 2006, Maya has been spent supporting youth in finding their place in their ecological and human communities by working with Wild Child Santa Cruz, Gaia Passages, and other programs. She has been regularly leading mushroom foraging trips for adults for over 4 years. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Ecopsychology, and weaves together human and ecological remediation through her work teaching Mycopermaculture, Fungal Biology, Mycorenewal and Mushroom Identification.

New Zealand and South America were once part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. As these continents drifted apart, they developed their own ecologies, endemics and unique fungal species. This presentation explores the similarities, differences and beauty of these far southern forests. We explore biodiversity, ecology and evolution through imagery and natural history. About the Speaker: Dean Lyons is a naturalist, botanist, and mycologist from California who is passionate about ecology, biodiversity, and community science. He splits his time between botany fieldwork and mushroom collecting for the Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDIS), with the majority of his work focused on the Sierra Nevada mountains. He is also a photographer and sees these art forms as powerful tools for science communication and education. He had been on fungal expeditions to New Zealand and South America and throughout the United States.

Color, Craft & Connection: Mushroom Dyeing as a Practice of Presence & Renewal When life feels like too much, the forest offers something quietly grounding. Join Alissa Allen to explore mushroom and lichen dyeing as a practice of presence, color, and connection.

Fungal Curation and Novel Discoveries in Santa Cruz County Watch part 2 of Reagan's Talk It will showcase several of Reagan’s observations from the past year that had never been recorded in Santa Cruz country. Reagan Peschke is a naturalist and undergraduate at UCSC studying creative writing. Before moving to Santa Cruz, Reagan had almost no exposure to the world of fungi. But during her first winter on campus in 2023, she couldn’t resist taking photos of the colorful waxy caps on the paths between her classes. What started as an interest in photography blossomed into a deep, all-consuming passion for studying, documenting and collecting fungi. Over the past year and a half, Reagan has made nearly 5,000 observations of fungi. She started her own fungarium with more than 600 vouchered samples from across the United States. Reagan leads an internship at the UCSC Kenneth S. Norris Center where she oversees the management of thousands of fungal specimens and she teaches students how to curate fungi. She was also a teaching assistant for the Natural History of Fungi at UCSC led by Christian Schwarz. When she’s not in the field collecting fungi or giving guest lectures, she’s helping people identify mushrooms on platforms like iNaturalist. Reagan hopes to explore the intersection between her passions for writing and fungi by becoming a scientific communicator and publishing field guides.