By Staff
You hear it all the time; this plant is really rare or that animal is endangered, but have you ever wondered how we know that? Many plants and animals hang out where normal people rarely, if ever, go. Places like foreboding swamps, murky stream bottoms or dense, brushy thickets.
Just because we don't see a particular plant or animal in our yard, along the road or near our deer stand doesn't mean it isn't out there. On the other hand, maybe it really is fading into oblivion and the alarm flag should be raised. How are we to know?
Professional wildlife and land managers have long been plagued with not knowing what species and habitat types are in trouble, what should be done about it and who is best equipped to do it.
Here in Michigan for nearly 30 years that daunting task has been on the shoulders of a unique agency few have heard of, the Michigan Natural Features Inventory, or MNFI for short. MNFI and its counterpart agencies in a number of other states is the brainchild of The Nature Conservancy, one of the world's largest and most renowned private conservation organizations. Recognizing wildlife managers need for comprehensive, up to date information on the status of this country's wildlife and its habitats The Nature Conservancy assembled teams of scientists with expertise in biology, zoology and ecology. Their mission was to go out and slog the swamps, bust through the brush, climb the mountains and scour the waterways to determine the status of all the plants, animals and ecosystems of a given region. The Nature Conservancy's intent was to help get these programs going and then turn them over to the states for management.
MNFI was launched in 1980 but remained under The Nature Conservancy auspices contracted by the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources. In 2000 MNFI was shifted from The Nature Conservancy to become a program of Michigan State University Extension. Today MNFI maintains the only comprehensive database of Michigan's rare, threatened and endangered species and habitats. MNFI's experts continue to prowl about the state day and night monitoring the well being of our wildlife. Old museum and herbaria records are scoured to determine how things once were, what has changed and why and is it for the good or bad. Scientific publications are closely monitored to add to the information pile. MNFI is now largely funded by a variety of grants from state, Federal and local government agencies as well as some private sources.
Some of the many things MNFI does with this data are to assign rarity ranks to all of Michigan's plant and animal species and set conservation priorities. They keep regulatory agencies informed and guide land use and management activities. They also identify data gaps and research needs. Not only do they identify data and research needs, they participate in actually doing it. This is where my association with MNFI began, first as a volunteer and now as a part time employee involved with study and research of the Mitchell's satyr butterfly, a very rare, endangered species occurring in southern Michigan and northern Indiana. Every year people from MNFI and its partner conservation organizations are slogging through swamps counting these butterflies to monitor their status. We have marked them and followed their movements with GPS and have discovered where they lay their eggs. We have learned to successfully rear them in captivity and in the process discovered what the larvae eat. We have cleared invasive brush from their habitat and created corridors to link habitat together. Their genetic DNA is being explored. And this is just some of the things being done for one species. Similar work is ongoing for a multitude of other troubled species throughout the state.
MNFI is essentially the guardians of our wildlife. It is up to them to recognize when a species is struggling and to provide the information wildlife managers need to lend a helping hand. Carpe diem.