Beneath your feet, right now, an ancient network is humming with activity. Mycorrhizal fungi — threadlike organisms that form vast underground webs connecting the roots of plants — have been quietly sustaining life on Earth for over 400 million years. And thanks to the tireless work of one scientist, the world is finally paying attention.
Dr. Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, has been named the winner of the 2026 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, one of the most prestigious awards in environmental science. The prize recognizes her three decades of research into mycorrhizal networks and her extraordinary efforts to translate that science into global conservation action.
"I've spent my career trying to make people care about something they can't see," Kiers said in an interview with The New York Times. "Fungi aren't cute. They don't have big eyes. But they're holding the planet together."
The numbers behind her claim are staggering. Mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with roughly 90% of all plant species. They facilitate the exchange of nutrients, help plants resist disease, and — crucially for the climate crisis — store enormous quantities of carbon underground. Recent estimates suggest these fungal networks sequester approximately 13 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to about 36% of global fossil fuel emissions.
Yet until recently, fungi were almost entirely absent from conservation policy. Climate models didn't account for them. Protection frameworks ignored them. Even basic mapping of where they exist was virtually nonexistent.
Kiers set out to change that. In 2021, she co-founded the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), an organization dedicated to mapping Earth's fungal networks and advocating for their protection. The initiative has since collected over 10,000 soil samples from 35 countries, creating the first global atlas of underground biodiversity.
"What Toby has done is nothing short of revolutionary," said Dr. Suzanne Simard, the University of British Columbia professor whose work on "mother trees" helped popularize the concept of forest communication networks. "She took an invisible world and made it impossible to ignore."
Kiers describes her approach as "punk science" — unconventional, urgent, and unafraid of challenging established thinking. She has argued that conservation must expand its focus beyond charismatic megafauna and pristine landscapes to include the microbial ecosystems that underpin all life.
The Tyler Prize committee cited both her scientific contributions and her ability to communicate complex ideas to the public. "Dr. Kiers has changed how we think about conservation itself," the committee stated. "She has shown that the most important ecosystems on Earth are the ones we've been walking over without a second thought."
For Kiers, the prize is less a personal achievement than a milestone for the field. "If this award makes one policymaker think about what's underground before they approve a development project," she said, "then it's done its job."
