MNFI Great Lakes Islands 1998–2002 final inventory synthesis

Summary

The 2002 MNFI report is the final synthesis of the five-year Great Lakes Islands inventory project begun in 1998. It is important to this knowledge base because it explains how individual observations became spatial natural- feature records, significant biodiversity areas, and planning evidence.

The project documented 216 natural-community, rare-animal, and rare-plant occurrences: 115 new and 101 updated. The breakdown was 41 new and 21 updated natural-community occurrences, 38 new and 13 updated rare-animal occurrences, and 36 new and 67 updated rare-plant occurrences. Nearly one-third of the 50 identified elements were globally rare or rarer.

Beaver Archipelago significance

The project identified 94 significant biodiversity areas across its island groups. Forty were in the Beaver Island archipelago, compared with 24 on Drummond Island and 16 on Bois Blanc Island. These are planning areas built from ecological evidence—not parcels, ownership boundaries, or guaranteed current habitat polygons.

This count provides a useful historical bridge for the current maps: the archipelago was not merely recognized as a general wildlife area; it contained the largest share of the project’s identified significant areas.

Final-year ecological results

The 2002 field season focused on Bois Blanc and the Les Cheneaux islands, but its final synthesis is directly relevant to Beaver because it places the earlier Beaver/Garden/Hog work in a common five-year framework.

• Animals: Bois Blanc surveys merged three previously tracked Eastern Massasauga occurrences into one contiguous suitable-habitat occurrence and identified two new Hine’s emerald dragonfly occurrences. A known Hine’s emerald occurrence on Snake Island was not reconfirmed, while surveys on Marquette found potential habitat but no occurrence.
• Plants: five new rare-plant occurrences and nine updates were recorded. Bois Blanc additions included Houghton’s goldenrod, Beauty sedge, Lake Huron tansy, and limestone oak fern; Pitcher’s thistle, dwarf lake iris, butterwort, and pale Indian plantain records were updated.
• Communities: five new high-quality natural-community occurrences and three updates were identified. Types included northern fen, rich conifer swamp, wooded dune and swale, boreal forest, and mesic northern forest.
• Habitat framing: the report treats Great Lakes marsh and shoreline communities together with interior boreal forest, mesic northern forest, and conifer swamp, providing a useful crosswalk between coastal geology, wetland hydrology, forest structure, and species records.

GIS and cartographic significance

MNFI processed approximately 460 natural-feature occurrences into spatial data for its GIS, representing nearly four percent of the statewide database. The workflow was:

1. survey natural communities, plants, and animals;
2. record and update element occurrences;
3. digitize those occurrences as spatial data;
4. identify significant biodiversity areas; and
5. use the results in conservation outreach and land-use planning.

That workflow is the closest historical precedent for the current project’s soil, geology, land-cover, tree-canopy, forest-inventory, wildlife, and GBIF layers. It supports connecting the layers while keeping each source’s precision and evidence class visible.

Conservation and local knowledge

The project held workshops for Beaver, Drummond, and Bois Blanc. Across the three islands, residents ranked natural features as their most important community attributes, and locally valued sites were nearly identical to MNFI’s significant sites. This is useful evidence that the ecological mapping was not only a remote technical exercise; it also aligned with local knowledge and stewardship priorities.

Limits

The report is a project synthesis, not a complete inventory of all Michigan islands. Its occurrence totals combine several island groups, and the underlying MNFI GIS polygons are not reproduced here. A non-reconfirmed or non-detected occurrence remains bounded by the survey effort and should not be converted into an absence claim.

The generated index preserves the report pages, counts, island-group scope, and access limitation. It does not substitute for obtaining the underlying MNFI occurrence polygons or the full 2000 and 2001 report files.

Sources

See the sources: block above and the generated JSON crosswalk.

Added 3 August 2026. Recent changes