Peter Darling admits to being a bit buggy for bugs.
Once summer is in full swing, the Cape Elizabeth resident will be on the road, hunting, identifying and collecting everything from bees to butterflies from one end of the state to the other as a volunteer for the state’s winter moth trapping project and a study mapping bumblebee populations.
“I’m a total geek for things like this,” Darling said. “I’m really looking forward to summer so I can spend as many weekends as I can out and about.”
Darling is part of an army of like-minded volunteers around the state. They’re the reason Maine is the envy of other states that rely on these “citizen scientists” to collect data and information otherwise unattainable on such a comprehensive scale. With so many folks willing, a lot of data are being collected and used for science research around the state.
“People in other states ask me, ‘How do we find all these volunteers?” Charlene Donahue, forest entomologist with the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, said. “We just ask and sometimes just go to a town office and ask if they know anyone who’d want to look at bugs and the people [in the town office] will usually say, ‘Sure, so-and-so would be perfect.’”
Donahue’s department is organizing volunteers to take part in the Budworm Tracker program to trap and collect spruce budworm moths at least once per week during the flight season, which lasts between June and August. The data will be sent to researchers tracking a potential spread of the invasive pest into Maine from Canada.
Working with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the University of Maine Orono and Farmington campuses, volunteers are helping the state survey bumblebee populations for the Maine Bumble Bee Atlas project.
“ Wasp Watchers” in Maine “adopt” a colony of the nonstinging, Maine native wasp Cerceris fumipennis, which Donahue said can indicate the presence of the destructive invasive emerald ash-borer.
“A lot of our research is around looking for invasive species,” Donahue said. “These volunteers are our eyes in the woods, and that is what we need.”
To get the same level of observational data provided by these citizen scientists using paid staff or researchers would be nearly impossible, she said.
“It would take years and lots of money we just don’t have,” Donahue said. “To engage [volunteers] takes less time, far less money and they feel that they are part of something bigger and making a difference, [and] they are thrilled to be doing it.”
There are no firm numbers on how many citizen scientists there are in Maine, but Donahue estimates there are thousands of them involved in everything from backyard observations to expeditions into the Maine woods for detailed monitoring.
“We find Mainers really want to be involved,” she said. “They want to know what is going on around them and love telling people about what they are doing and what they are seeing.”
That level of engagement helps state and private conservation groups when it comes to drumming up support for environmental policies and actions.
“Our mission in Maine is to move people into action and getting people involved,” Susan Gallo, wildlife biologist for Maine Audubon, said. “Having people work as citizen scientists is a great way for us to meet that mission by helping them become involved by getting off the couch and doing something that makes a difference.”
Through the Audubon projects, volunteers count loons or bats, listen for frogs and toads or observe wildlife crossings on Maine roads.
James Treadwell was preparing this week to start his annual rounds as part of Maine Audubon’s Amphibian Monitoring Program and could not wait to get started.
“This is the fifth year I’ve done it,” the Greeley Middle School art teacher said. “I’m interested in science and particularly interested in reptiles and amphibians, so as an ametuer science guy looking for a way to get out and observe wildlife, this project is a great opportunity to contribute and enjoy myself.”
Overseen nationally by the U.S. Geological Survey, the amphibian project sends volunteers out to specified monitoring locations to listen and record frog vocalizations.
Treadwell has 10 stops on his monitoring route where he identifies the frogs he hears and records environmental data including temperatures, cloud cover, noise levels and the time.
“I listen for five minutes,” he said. “There are nine species of frogs common in Maine and my data records if I am hearing a few of them or a full chorus.”
The data, he said, are used by state and national researchers to document trends in frog populations.
“I really feel like I am making a difference,” Treadwell said. “I know [USGS] has been collecting that data for years and that it does get used.”
For Darling, counting the state’s insects gives him that same level of involvement in addition to providing opportunities to get out and see Maine.
“Last year I put in well over 2,000 miles and touched the east and west corners of the state,” he said. “I can’t tell you the number of places I have seen in Maine I would not have seen otherwise.”
As far as Treadwell is concerned, most of the volunteers are able to turn their hobbies into productive research.
“I’m always outside anyway all four seasons with my camera documenting what I see and sort of informally observing,” he said. “These citizen science projects make sense [because] the capitalize on something a lot of us are out there already doing.”
Those observations, whether from the amphibian monitoring program or other Audubon projects such as Big Sit Bird Count, the Brook Trout Pond Survey Project, the Christmas Bird Count, the Maine Loon Project and the Wildlife Road Watch, are crucial to Audubon’s mission, Gallo said.
“We are a science-based organization,” she said. “We want to make good decisions based on good data and observations and knowing as much as we can about these species.”
Sharon Whitney of South Harpswell got involved as a citizen scientist after she observed a moth in her yard she’d never seen before.
She contacted Donahue, and next thing she knew she was “trapping” invasive winter moths on her property.
“How can you not want to be involved?” Whitney said. “I mean, it turns out we have this invasive species here that damage our fruit trees and I want to do whatever I can to protect those trees.”
Whitney, Darling and Treadwell are typical of Maine’s citizen scientists, according to Gallo, in that they come from all walks of life, but all share that desire to be involved.
“These people are passionate about whatever [project] they are doing,” she said. “Sometimes they just want to help solve a problem or want to find an answer to a question or maybe have always had a desire to do science. These projects are a way for them to feed into all that.”
