Criteria for default geo-privacy

[jdmore]

I agree that

@curious

IUCN designations cannot be relied upon to reflect the level of imperilment in any particular state

And continue to disagree that

@thomaseverest

IUCN statuses can be used even if they do not match the same exact political geography

Conservation statuses have everything to do with the geography they encompass, whether or not we happen to assign the same labels (like “critically imperiled”) to them for different geographies. I continue to argue that S-ranks and N-ranks have no appropriate IUCN equivalent other than “Not Evaluated (NE).” In any case, existence of an IUCN equivalent status need bear no relevance to the decision to obscure or not obscure a taxon in any particular jurisdiction. That decision can stand on its own merits.

@curious

An “S” rank is an indication of a degree of imperilment, not merely an indication of rarity. In other words, if a taxon has a rank that qualifies it to be on the list, it’s because a level of threat has been determined.

As an(other?) employee of a NatureServe Network member, I agree with this in principle. In practical terms, though, many of the existing ranks are still primarily rarity-based, because there is very little documentation of threats for the vast majority of species tracked by the Network – and/or, very limited capacity for plugging known threats data into revised rank calculations.

Even when we do have good threats data, the specific threats may have nothing to do with public knowledge of locations (climate change, for example), or may actually be increased by obscuration (habitat conversion/development, for example). S2 may mean very different things for different taxa, regarding the need to obscure locations. So, in the end, I don’t think we’ll be able to avoid taking obscuration decisions case by case in each jurisdiction.

That said, I do also agree that any default taxon geoprivacy should

@curious

be tailored state by state, and that the default, in any given state, be based the “S” rank in that state.

Except for “special-interest” groups like cacti, orchids, carnivorous plants, herps, some butterflies, etc., I am generally much less concerned for S3 taxa in large, low-population-density states like Nevada, than in small high-density states like New Jersey. Ideally in my opinion, we would avoid “default” obscuration as much as possible, and make decisions taxon-by-taxon as much as possible. But either way, making this a reality will require much more coordination with and involvement on iNaturalist among NatureServe Network members (setting aside Canada, which already has their own evolving process).