Great Lakes officials are using tech to scan the web for businesses selling invasive species. The Great Lakes Commission is testing a web-crawler that scans for websites selling invasive species that could harm the Great Lakes.<\/p>\n
Some of the species are restricted in parts of the Great Lakes.<\/p>\n
Whats legal in Texas may not be legal in Michigan, said Erika Jensen, Executive Director of the Great Lakes Commission.<\/p>\n
Once the Great Lakes Detector of Invasive Aquatics in Trade or GLDIATR finds harmful species for sale on the web, a letter is sent to the merchant, asking the business not to ship that plant or animal to people living in a Great Lakes state.<\/p>\n
Many times they maybe arent aware that theyre selling something that poses a risk to the Great Lakes region, Jensen said, adding that most agree to restrict sales of the invasive species to places in the Great Lakes region.<\/p>\n
The only option before this was to have staff do manual Google searches for specific invasive species for sale on the web.<\/p>\n
Using this sort of web crawling technology, we can simultaneously search for multiple species in a much shorter period of time, Jensen said.<\/p>\n
In a 30 day trial of the GLDIATR software, it scanned 300,000 webpages and found 200 websites with invasive species for sale.<\/p>\n
More than 185 non-native aquatic species are already established in the Great Lakes. More are threatening to enter through many means, including as a package left at your doorstep.<\/p>\n
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New web scanning technology helps protect the Great Lakes from invasive species - Michigan Radio<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Great Lakes officials are using tech to scan the web for businesses selling invasive species. The Great Lakes Commission is testing a web-crawler that scans for websites selling invasive species that could harm the Great Lakes. Continue reading