How a rights of nature trial led to the discovery of a hallucinogenic mushroom in Ecuador

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It was September 2022. In an event room at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, there was a group of extraordinary people: philosophers, lawyers, scientists, writers, artists.

They were brought together by the

More Than Human Rights Project

(MOTH), an interdisciplinary initiative linked to New York University that promotes reflection on how much, how and why the conception of rights should not only apply to humans but also to a forest, a tapir, to a fungal tissue.

Flora, fauna and funga.

Three crucial forces in a potential paradigm shift.

Among those present were figures such as the German Andrea Wulf, author of

The Invention of Nature,

the magnificent biography of Alexander von Humboldt;

the English writer Robert Macfarlane, considered one of the greatest exponents of nature literature;

the musician Cosmo Sheldrake, also English, who has recorded albums with the sounds of whales and birds in danger of extinction;

the famous Chilean mycologist Giuliana Furci, director of the Fungi Foundation and advocate that, in the understanding of the macroscopic diversity of life, the flora and fauna should be integrated with funga, the kingdom of fungi that allows the interconnection between all the organisms;

the Colombian jurist César Rodríguez-Garavito, director of MOTH, and two renowned Ecuadorian lawyers, Agustín Grijalva and Ramiro Ávila, former judges of the Constitutional Court, the highest body for the administration of justice in Ecuador, where emblematic cases on human rights have been processed. nature.

“I was obsessed with declaring non-human entities whose cases reached the Court to be subject to rights,” says Ávila.

To attend this meeting, all guests had to send a text on the major topic in question observed from their respective disciplines.

Among them, came the sentence of an exemplary case of defense of a forest.

The Los Cedros Protective Forest is a reserve of 6,000 hectares of humid and cloudy tropical ecosystem located northwest of the Andes mountain range, in the Ecuadorian province of Imbabura.

Its geography ranges from 1,000 to 2,700 meters of altitude, four rivers cross it and it is home to jaguars, monkeys, reptiles, amphibians, 309 species of birds, 236 of orchids and 600 of moths, in addition to an entire universe of fungi. .

Today it is owned by the State, but in 1988 it had been purchased by Josef DeCoux, a strong American environmentalist who manages the scientific station that stands in the heart of the reserve.

Two researchers analyze a fungus during an expedition through the Los Cedros Protective Forest. Cosmo Sheldrake

At the end of 2017, the Ministry of the Environment granted a license to the National Mining Company (Enami EP) to carry out exploration within the forest.

In 2018, the autonomous government of Cotacachi, one of the cantons near the reserve, presented an appeal to the provincial court to prevent exploration.

Protected by the Constitution of Ecuador, which in 2008 became a pioneer in the world in the recognition of the rights of nature, the action alleged that the exploration permit violated the protection of water and ecosystems, and that it violated the right of the communities to be consulted about concessions of this type.

In June 2019, the Provincial Court ruled in favor of the autonomous Government of Cotacachi, and despite the appeal that Enami consequently presented, in December 2021 the Constitutional Court ratified the resolution of the provincial entity and annulled the permit of prospecting that had been granted to the mining company.

Agustín Grijalva and Ramiro Ávila were then judges of the Constitutional Court and voted in favor of protecting the forest.

Grijalva, in addition, was the one who conducted the analysis of the case and then wrote the sentence.

Los Cedros won the trial in its defense and the news was a celebration in the international environment that advocates for these causes.

Those personalities were discussing these topics in the fall of New York, when the case of the Los Cedros forest came up into the conversation.

Everyone was amazed, so much so that an enthusiastic Robert Macfarlane immediately proposed that they embark on a trip.

The following month they landed in Quito to enter the mountains.

They came Macfarlane, who was carrying out research on the rights of nature;

Cosmo Sheldrake, determined with his many devices to record the heartbeats of the forest;

the lawyer Rodríguez-Garabito, and Giuliana Furci, who saw himself without any special mission until, days before, he spoke with his colleague, Dr. Bryn Dentinger, from the University of Utah, who told him that in 2011 in that same forest there were discovered two new specimens of

Psilocybe

mushrooms (which contain psychoactive substances, which is why they are often called hallucinogens), and recommended that she pay attention in case she found them too so that, with a second identification as dictated by scientific protocol, she could register them officially.

Here the Ecuadorian lawyers and other hosts were waiting, including biologists, activists and the guide who would show the way.

That October 24, 2022 was a hot day.

Along the way, the group stopped several times to learn about the environment thanks to the explanations of the experts.

They also took a bath in a waterfall and the moment represented a celebration of the natural magnificence that had been defended in that trial.

When they returned to the path, Giuliana Furci had a deep premonition.

“I felt something special, I felt like the mushroom was there,” she says, “and I wondered if she verbalized it or not, and I did.

I told them, 'Hey, I feel like it's here.'

Forty meters ahead, solitary and hidden with its brown tone among the humid vegetation, was the mushroom, one of those that Dr. Dentinger had discovered 11 years earlier in the same forest, but on another path, and at another time of year, which made the find even more significant.

Furci's father had died a month and a half earlier and she was carrying acute grief that, the moment her energy connected with the presence of the mushroom, she found sudden comfort.

“There is a part of you that also dies when a parent dies,” she says.

“But for me it was a blessing that the connection with the mushroom showed me that she was still alive.”

Excited, she secured the space, and together they all contemplated for a moment the fortune of the circumstance.

Then came the collection protocol: photographs, descriptive notes, georeferencing.

Furci took the mushroom out of the ground, wrapped it in fresh plant leaves so that it would not dehydrate, and stored it in a metal box in which Cosmo Sheldrake brought medicine.

In that imperceptible void left by the fungus, the musician introduced his ultrasensitive contact microphones to record the resonance of the habitat.

“To me it sounds like a stomach digesting, a low-pitched, rumbling gurgling sound,” Sheldrake says.

The mushroom was no bigger than a match, and the crown - the cap - was quite pointed.

Subsequent analyzes determined that the molecular structure was the same as that of one of those discovered in 2011, so it could be registered as a new species.

This was done using the Index Fungorum, the electronic publication tool of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, in London, which allows speeding up registration by circumventing the extended processes of scientific journals.

It had to be given a name.

“For me, Paul Stamets is a mentor figure in mycology, he has dedicated most of his life to studying the fungi of the

Psilocybe

group ,” explains Furci.

“But there was no species dedicated to it, much less a

Psilocybe

, so it seemed appropriate to do it.”

Thus

Psilocybe stametsii

was born .

“I feel deeply honored by this recognition and eager to participate in a field expedition to see this species in its natural habitat,” said the mycologist on his social networks.

One of the Psilocybe mushroom specimens discovered in the Los Cedros Protective Forest. Cosmo Sheldrake

Paul Stamets is perhaps the most famous mycologist in the world, a self-taught person who has spent almost fifty years of research and has published several books on the subject.

He is largely responsible for the integration of that cosmos into popular culture.

The Netflix documentary

Fantastic Mushrooms

has him as the protagonist, and the series

Star Trek: Discovery

dedicated the character of Lieutenant Stamets to him.

Until the day comes when I can walk through Los Cedros, maybe I can hear it.

With the variety of sounds he recorded there, Cosmo Sheldrake composed a song that will be released soon.

He will maintain the logic of the albums in which he has used sounds from nature, something that also runs through the reflections on rights that go beyond the human: the recognition of co-authorship of the ecosystems from which they have been taken.

50% of the publishing rights to his album

Wake Up Calls

, which brings together songs from British birds in danger of extinction, was donated to organizations that work in defense of these birds.

Something similar happened with the album

Wild Wet World

, built over 10 years with clicks, crackles, crackles and more rumors of the marine world.

Now, in addition to the still unnamed song composed with sounds from Los Cedros, he will do so with

Lichens

, one of the 21 songs that brings together his new album,

Eye to the Ear

, to be published in April, in which he introduces the sounds captured in the field where

Psilocybe stametsii

was found .

15% of the publication rights of that song will go to the Fungi Foundation directed by Giuliana Furci.

“For me, bird songs, for example, are a creative, expressive, musical phenomenon.

If we attribute agency and consciousness to these creatures, it seems only fair that their creative expressions be recognized,” says Sheldrake.

“The same thing happens with the song about Los Cedros, which has sounds of the underground and running water, of birds and bats.

Songwriting credits and copyrights should be shared between human and non-human creators.”

The next MOTH meeting will be in April of this year in Quito.

Among other topics, Ramiro Ávila and Giuliana Furci discuss how to make funga the argument to defend a territory near the Los Cedros forest from mining exploitation.

“If a type of fungus is in danger of extinction, mining activity is a threat,” explains Ávila.

“The idea is to declare the fungus a subject of rights in order to protect the entire ecosystem.”