'Citizen scientists' are community members that provide a variety of volunteer services to research projects. Citizen science is an important component of MBI. For instance, during the winter season of 2011-12 over 120 citizens donated over 2,000 work hours to forest carnivore bait station monitoring. These citizen scientists established nearly half of the 86 bait stations maintained by a group of seven partner organizations. Citizen scientists have assisted MBI by building slug traps, building radiation shields for climate monitoring stations, prepping bait for bait stations, and maintaining bait stations in the field. Bait station field work for citizens ranges from easy stations which school children can assist with to remote sites which require advanced ski mountaineering skills to reach.
MBI makes implementing State Wildlife Action Plans fun! At top citizen scientist Gary Quinn skis to a high elevation bait station site. At bottom citizen scientists Mary Franzel, Sandii Mellen, and Jim Mellen celebrate a succesful bait station hang.
Please see the following website for information on volunteering on the forest carnivore monitoring project:
http://www.scotchmanpeaks.org/all-things-wolverine/how-to-volunteer-for-the-wolverine-project/
For information about having your school group participate in this project please contact Dennison Webb dennison.webb@soleexperiences.org> with Selkirk Outdoor Leadership Experiences http://soleexperiences.org/>
We will post additional citizen science opportunities on this website as they become available.
Above: IDFG Wildlife Technician demonstrates proper bait station techniques to a group of citizen scientists.
With the help of citizen scientists during the winter of 2012 MBI captured images and DNA samples from three Species of Greatest Conservation Need.
Clockwise from top to bottom are images of Lynx, Wolverine, and Fisher:
