Bioneers: Paul Stamets

Paul Stamets, president of Fungi Perfecti, a mail-order business supplying "mycotechnologies" to mushroom cultivators worldwide, has discovered four new species of mushrooms; pioneered countless techniques in edible and medicinal mushroom cultivation and in "fungal bioremediation;" and written six books, including Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms, The Mushroom Cultivator, Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, and many articles and scholarly papers. A dedicated hiker, conservationist and explorer, his passion is to preserve, protect and clone as many ancestral strains of mushrooms as possible from the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.