The next sentence reads:
However, in situations these species are thought to be in very little danger from exploitation or damage due to the public’s knowledge of the location of these species, curators are advised to change the taxon geoprivacy value associated with the conservation status from “obscured” to “open” on the taxon edit page.
I didn’t and still don’t feel that discussion is really required when all these species were open 2 weeks ago, and had been for probably years, without any suggestion that they should be obscured, and are widespread, relatively common species (despite steep declines in most cases).
But here is a list (possibly not entirely complete) of birds I set to “open” globally yesterday:
- Snowy Owl
- Semipalmated Sandpiper
- Rusty Blackbird
- Eastern Meadowlark
- Wood Thrush
- Olive-sided Flycatcher
- Black Scoter
- Golden-winged Warbler
- Chimney Swift
- Eastern Whip-poor-will
- Evening Grosbeak
- Red Knot
- Cerulean Warbler
- Common Grackle
- Blackpoll Warbler
- Buff-breasted Sandpiper
- Rufous Hummingbird
Ultimately, NONE of these species should have a global obscuring status, as we have already determined, thorugh lengthy consultation with local experts, that they do not need to be obscured in all or parts of Canada. If they need to be obscured in other jurisdictions, they should be set as such (I deal fairly regularly with flags asking for species X to be opened or obscured in some place or another), but I don’t think geoprivacy settings that have been set in an automated way with no human input whatsoever should be treated as anything more than super preliminary. Indeed, I would suggest that global geoprivacy based on IUCN should not be automatically implemented for any species with more than say 50 observations on iNat - in these cases it is far more likely than not to be unnecessary. And if it is necessary, it is likely that the proper obscuring will already have been done at a lower jurisdiction.