The salamander fungus where the money follows the outbreaks

More than 12 million euros, very unevenly spread

A survey of 15 of the European Union's 27 member states, plus the United Kingdom, has traced more than 12 million euros of spending on Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans — Bsal for short — between the fungus's scientific description in 2013 and the end of 2025. It was published online on 25 June 2026 and carried in the July 2026 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, volume 32, number 7, and it counts grants rather than infected animals. Of that money, 89 per cent was used by the four countries where the fungus is already established in the wild, while seven other countries had access to less than 100,000 euros.

The breakdown by donor is as telling as the total. Governments supplied 68 per cent, roughly 8 million euros; non-governmental organisations about 3 per cent, or 417,039 euros; universities under 1 per cent, or 101,887 euros. The European Union itself contributed about 27 per cent, some 3.3 million euros. Thirty-seven authors are named; the first of them, Philipp Böning, and Stefan Lötters work at Trier University, and the team's affiliations reach beyond Europe to the United States, South Africa and Japan. The article is free to read.

What this paper is, and what it is not

It reports no new outbreak and no new detection. The journal files it as an Online Report: a policy argument built on the grant and project inventory in its appendix tables, not on fresh sampling. Nor does it cover Europe. The authors compiled detection and funding data for 15 of the 27 EU member states plus the United Kingdom; they found funding in 13 countries, twelve of them in the EU, and projects in 16; and of the remaining twelve member states they write plainly that response actions “are unknown, but are likely to be limited, if present at all”. More than 12 million euros is therefore a floor over a partial sample, not a European total, and every euro figure here belongs to the period 2013 to 2025.

The fungus itself is not the one this catalogue has covered before. B. salamandrivorans is a different species from B. dendrobatidis, with a different host range and a different history; it originated in Asia, most probably reached Europe through the pet trade, and was discovered in 2013 in the Netherlands. It can cause lethal infection in most European salamander species. It does not infect people, and the paper's whole argument rests on that fact: a pathogen that harms only wildlife commands neither the budgets nor the machinery that a zoonosis or a livestock disease does.

Two decades, 130 outbreaks, and one arithmetic trap

The authors write that “after 2 decades of presence in Europe” there have been more than 130 known outbreaks in the wild, affecting more than six native species in four countries, with the fungus also detected in captive amphibians in private and zoo collections in five countries. Set beside the discovery date of 2013, two decades looks like a slip. It is not: the authors mean the fungus was present in Europe well before anyone named it. Natural range expansion is estimated at 5 to 16 kilometres a year, but long-distance, probably human-mediated dispersal and independent introductions are both documented.

The paper also warns that the true distribution is likely wider than the records show, because some hosts carry the pathogen without falling ill and clinical signs are not unique to this infection. That is a caveat about detection, not a claim of hidden outbreaks anywhere: the paper names no country beyond those four, and mentions Poland only in a co-author's affiliation.

Where the sampling happens

The money built a passive-surveillance network of 16 diagnostic centres, yet more than 60 per cent of tested sites and about 71 per cent of all samples came from the four outbreak countries — Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. Wild environments were sampled ten times more often than captive collections, 46,578 samples against 4,940. That, the authors argue, limits the chance of catching a major transmission pathway, since the trade in animals is the likeliest route by which the fungus arrived; they add that the gap may equally reflect testing that is done but never reported.

Among the eleven countries reporting no outbreak, only Austria and Luxembourg sample at a comparable level, and 11,743 samples had been tested across the Bsal-naive EU countries by May 2025. National action plans exist in three member states, Belgium, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg, and only Belgium and Luxembourg have written the fungus into a national strategy. In the southern European and Balkan centres of salamander endemism — Italy, Portugal, Spain and the whole Balkan Peninsula — spending “did not surpass EUR 400,000 and 2 projects per country”.

Three figures that look alike

Three similar numbers sit within a few paragraphs, and confusing them is the easiest mistake this story invites. More than 12 million euros is the whole identified total for 2013 to 2025. About 1.2 million euros is the annual peak reached in 2025, matching a comparable peak of about 1.1 million euros in 2018. And about 1.2 million euros again is the sum invested in the EU countries where the fungus has not been found — the figure the authors set against American spending. Their phrase “in the EU in total” in that sentence means that group of countries rather than the Union as a whole, since otherwise it would contradict the 12 million. The United States, where the pathogen is not known to occur, has put more than 2 million dollars into surveillance of wild amphibian populations, covering more than 100,000 samples, and more than 7 million dollars into fundamental research.

Their other comparison is African swine fever. Over 2014 to 2023 the EU spent an estimated 215 million euros on that disease, which affects both livestock and wildlife, and 0.9 per cent of that sum, 900,000 euros, on mitigating Bsal. The authors say themselves that swine fever serves them not as a biological comparator but as a policy benchmark: the point is the ratio of institutional attention under one legislative framework, not an equivalence between the diseases, and the periods differ from the 2013 to 2025 Bsal accounting. It is worth knowing where the Bsal money went, too: 38.6 per cent of projects addressed fundamental research additionally or exclusively, absorbing about 9.8 million euros, which is 80 per cent of all funds available.

Committed money, and a recommendation

Fixed funding runs above about 1 million euros a year for 2026 and 2027, then falls below 100,000 euros for the two years after that, shared between four projects only. Those are sums already committed rather than a forecast of total spending, and what may be granted later is simply not known today. Bsal has meanwhile been listed under the EU Animal Health Law since 1 April 2021, and of the 64 infectious diseases on that list it is the only wildlife-only emerging disease under EU-wide regulation and the sole pathogen listed for biodiversity reasons; its listing in categories D and E obliges member states to conduct surveillance and prevent spread.

The paper closes with a proposal, not a decision: a coordinated EU-level programme of 6 to 10 million euros over five to seven years, and mandatory health certification for amphibians in trade, which most member states still lack. That is a recommendation made by researchers in a journal, not a decision or a legislative proposal of any EU institution. Readers can check the rest themselves — the open-access copy carries appendix tables giving funding and projects country by country. The most interesting thing in them is an absence: the twelve member states about which the authors could establish nothing at all.