Wild Spotter aims to protect America's wild places from non-native plants, pathogens, and animals which outcompete our native species and threaten the biodiversity and health of every aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem.
Promote Awareness
America's wild places are home to beauty, diversity, and reflection yet they are under attack from invasive species. A goal of Wild Spotter is to bring awareness to the public about which species are invading, how to identify them, and how these species are spreading.
Engage The Public
You can help us fight back against harmful invaders by becoming a Wild Spotter volunteer or partner. By downloading the app on your smartphone, you can start collecting vital data on what species are invading, where they are located, and the extent of their invasion; All while you are enjoying the great outdoors.
Defeat Invasives
With the data collected by you, our team can create effective management strategies to defeat these invaders. You are helping to create the first-ever nationwide inventory of invasive species in America's natural areas.
Protect Natural Areas
By creating management plans and assembling an inventory of invasive species, you are helping to protect recreational activities, such as fishing, hunting, climbing, as well as clean water, abundant wildlife, and all benefits of being outdoors.
This app is likeee sooo goood oh em gee. Its so epic and awesome and helps so much! #SpotTheWild
Decent but room for improvement
ALikeablePerson
First of all, I love the idea of the app. But it has its flaws. Namely not as many national forests as there really should be...a total of 27 as of writing this, not even enough for one in each US state. I’m from Pennsylvania and the closest forest to me is 200 or so miles away. And the majority of the forests listed are further than that. Other than that, I think it’s decent, just needs more forests. Maybe an app like iNaturalist can partner with this app?
Developer Response
We are going to be continuing to add new forests and hope to have all of them as well as other places like parks and wildlife refugees in the next few years.
solid app!
NateBBall
App is quite nice, with good ID info and reporting tools. One challenge is that, in offline mode, photos of the species are not saved for me — if the app is still being maintained, that would be an awesome thing to address! Considering pushing this app to citizen scientists, and that would be a good tool for them.
Missing some invasive species
cattle scourge
Excellent idea for an app and great design. One problem though, the most common invasive species I see in national forests is Bos taurus and its not listed as an option for reporting. When will Bos taurus be added as an option?
• Improved Map Experience: Wild Spotter now fetches wild place boundaries directly from our web services and downloads them to your device. This provides clearer, more accurate display of protected wild areas, national forests, parks, and other key locations right on the map—helping you spot and report invasives more effectively.
• Easier Species Management for Custom Wild Places: Added clear step-by-step instructions to help you add and assign species when creating new wild places, making it simpler to customize and track invasives in your chosen areas.
• We’ve also updated the account registration form for better clarity and ease of use.
For any questions, concerns or suggestions, email us either through the in-app feedback feature or at bugwood@uga.edu
Version 2.2.0
The developer, Charles T. Bargeron, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Linked to You
The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
Location
Contact Info
User Content
Identifiers
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Charles T. Bargeron
Size
52.3 MB
Category
Productivity
Compatibility
Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 16.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 13.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
