Up for a challenge? Great Smoky Mountains park needs your help spotting rare species

Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee is asking visitors to help conserve park species.

How? By asking them for pictures of every animal, plant, insect or other organisms they meet on their hikes.

Discover Life in America, the national park’s research partner, started “Smokies Most Wanted” with the app iNaturalist. Once visitors upload pictures of their finds on the app, Discover Life in America’s team can start “recording new park species or detecting invasive ones, learning about under-studied or rare species, and mapping species across the park,” a news release says.

Through the app, visitors can pinpoint where they spotted a species, record sounds and take pictures, according to the project’s page.

Since Jan. 7, visitors’ contributions have helped discover over 70 new species to the park, according to iNaturalist. Among these are “33 different kinds of wasps, 15 types of flies, 10 beetles, and many others.”

“It’s really fun to be part of a community where anyone can make meaningful scientific contributions with just a camera and an interest in nature,” Graham Montgomery, a PhD student at UCLA, said in the release.

Park scientists use the observations to map the plants and animals that live in the national park. These maps allow park staff to “make informed decisions about protecting the park and its precious natural resources.”

Of the 60,000 to 80,000 species that live in the national park, only about 21,000 have been cataloged. Of these, fewer than 1,000 have been put on a map, the research partner says.

“There are millions of visitors to the park each year, but few likely know about or use iNaturalist,” Will Kuhn, Discover Life in America’s director of science and research, said in the release. “If we’re able to get the word out to that crowd, that could mean thousands of new users making tens of thousands of observations – some of which may lead to new discoveries.”

The research organization also created a guide listing about 100 high-priority species that need additional information. Among the park’s most wanted species are the snapping turtle, the eastern chipmunk, the green stink bug, and many other species of fungus, plants, birds and insects.

This story was originally published March 3, 2022 at 2:21 PM with the headline "Up for a challenge? Great Smoky Mountains park needs your help spotting rare species."