Help fight wild pigs with your smartphone

Worried about invasive plants and animals trying to sneak into Michigan? It's now easy for citizen scientists to help state agencies tracking the rodents, beetles, feral swine and other intruders that threaten Michigan's natural habitat.

The Midwest Invasive Species Information Network (MISIN), operated out of a lab at Michigan State University, has a website and a free app that lets people report sightings of invasive species. The goal is to identify and detect invasive species early, when eradication is easiest and less costly.

Both the app and website have photos and written descriptions of 310 different invasive plants and animals. App users can report sightings with photographs and notes. The app also maps the location of the plant or animal.

"We invite people to take time to notice what's out there," said Sue Tangora, invasive species coordinator for the state Department of Natural Resources. "You don't have to memorize the whole litany of them. ... In a few minutes of your time, you can go through training and learn how to identify them and distinguish them from other lookalikes."

MISIN also makes it possible to locate invasives reported in your own neighborhood, Tangora said.

"You can verify what you're seeing. Has anyone else reported it?" she said.

Other contributors to the site include state and federal employees and a variety of nature organizations, said Amos Ziegler, an MSU research scientist who coordinates MISIN. He said the number of registered users doubled over the past year to over 1,700.

When MISIN gets a report on a species on the DNR's early alert list — a list of invasive species that pose a new or potential threat to the state — it immediately notifies the DNR, which can then dispatch a staffer to verify the existence of the plant or animal.

"Early detection is our only hope for eradication," Tangora said. "It's an economic burden, once they get in here" and these invaders can damage infrastructure, natural resources and sometimes human health.

Residents of southeast Michigan this summer reported sightings of nutria, a large, web-footed rodent that is on the DNR's early watch list. Nutria were introduced in the South and thought not to survive Michigan's climate, Tangora said.

"We know them to be in Ohio and it's not a stretch to see them coming into Michigan," said Tangora, who described them as nasty-looking and "fairly large aquatic animals that can be damaging. Certainly landowners will not want them in their wetlands and along their ditches."

Like other rodents, nutria are prolific breeders and eat the stems and roots of wetland plants. In states with nutria populations, they have destroyed marshland, a significant habitat for nesting waterfowl, wetland and songbirds.

As for the sightings, Tangora said one of the critters turned out not to be a nutria. The other could not be captured, but the DNR is following up with the landowner.

Also on the early watch list is the Asian longhorned beetle, a large black and white beetle with a long antennae that feeds on maple trees.

"It could be very damaging if it establishes in Michigan," Tangora said. She said the beetle could turn up in places such as swimming pool filters.

Feral swine are another concern. Michigan is at the start of what is known as an invasion curve — the numbers are still small, between 1,000 to 3,000 — but could potentially explode. Some states have populations in excess of 1 million.

Tangora said the swine are "very elusive, very secretive and very hard to detect." They are prolific breeders, hosting parasites that threaten humans, livestock and wildlife and causing extensive damage to forests, farmland and water resources.

Residents also are encouraged to be on the lookout for the expansion of phragmites, reeds that are not on the early detection watch list. They grow up to 15 feet tall, are found along roadsides, lakeshores and wetlands and have seed heads in the fall that look like feather dusters.

They can grow through asphalt and damage roads, and they crowd out cattails and other native plants needed by birds, butterflies and other wildlife.

Tangora said residents can also use MISIN to report pristine areas that have not been impacted by invasive species.

"Those are places we do want to protect," she said. "A lot of these are favorite getaway spots and just special places in the landscape. If we can keep invasives out of there, that's important. Every acre we protect from invasion is one more place that we'll have invasive-free and we won't have to bear that cost down the road."

Contact Jennifer Dixon: 313-223-4410, jbdixon@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jennbdixon.