Decades of oil drilling and spills have left their mark on the landscape, but now there is more hope for recovery than ever before, thanks to a revolutionary technique using mushrooms.
In a recent interview with Urgent Futures with Jesse Damiani (@urgentfuturespod), expert Danielle Stevenson shares her experiences with mycoremediation.
"I've seen contaminated sites that when you walk in, it looks like Mordor or something, like truly devastated landscapes that are so contaminated that the soil is black with oil," she says. "Sites that catch fire on hot days because of the chemicals in the soil where there's not a single plant or worm."
Normally, the life forms that live in healthy soil — plants, worms, and others — can't thrive in the toxic conditions of an oil spill. But there is one life form that can: fungus.
"So where we apply some fungal mycelium, a bit of water, perhaps some wood chips that are free from the city's waste stream," Stevenson explains. "And within three months, over 50% of the organic contaminants in the soil are gone."
The right species of fungus can actually break down oil and use it as nutrients to help the mushrooms grow. That converts the once-toxic material into something useful for the environment so that other species — plants and animals — can move in.
"Now there's plants growing where they couldn't grow before," says Stevenson. "That means there's worms coming in. The soil is supporting life. There's flowers growing. Now there's birds."
That's a big deal, given that earlier protocols for cleaning up oil spills involved just removing the contaminated soil. That left the area without its fertile layer of topsoil, making it nearly impossible to grow anything without further restoration — and meanwhile, the removed soil was toxic and had to be dumped somewhere.
Mycoremediation is a step toward true healing.
"It's just so beautiful and inspiring to see the type of transformation and cleanup and repair and regeneration that can happen in such a short time with relatively few inputs," says Stevenson. "And on top of that, once you put in those inputs, that bit of work at the beginning, you know, nature tends to take over and the regeneration just keeps happening."
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