I like the idea, though I think it would be difficult to apply given that the wild/captive dichotomy is fairly fundamental to the way iNat classifies observations as verifiable (and eligible to become RG) vs. non-verifiable (e.g. casual).
Maybe if the standing feature request to not lump non-wild observations with defective observations were ever implemented, it would become possible to refine the wild/non-wild criteria to allow for more nuance and better address some of the perennial issues (free-ranging non-wild individuals on one side of this coin; feral non-established individuals on the other). It would still be necessary to find some solution to determine which of these “neither wild nor non-wild” observations would be eligible for sharing with GBIF.
Wild Cattle: Wild cattle that were born wild, and never experienced domestication.
Feral Cattle: Cattle that were once domesticated, but are now living as wild animals.
Free-Range, Owned Cattle: Cattle that live in a similar way to wild cattle, but they get rounded up occasionally and “processed” (vaccinated, sold, butchered, etc.).
Captive Cattle: Fully captive cattle that are raised in paddocks or feedlots.
They’re not going to say, “Come, give us your hard-earned tourist dollars to view the captive but free-ranging ponies!” Wild ponies has a much better ring to it. You’d get scoffed at if you said, “Well, actually, there are no wild horses in the Americas, because humans killed them all 11,000 years ago.”
Do you consider game, on game farm, NR etc. as not wild either? I feel the example given in the thread about the cattle being owned should be not wild, since they are owned by someone or an entity…
But… we consider game on game farm and NR and even national parks as wild animals, yet they are confined by a fence and ultimately owned by someone just like the cattle in the example.
If that’s the case then very few large mammal observations in South Africa would be considered wild, you would need to go to Botswana, where nobody can claim ownership of an animal in order to get RG observations.
Or do we consider them as wild because they are reproducing without any human involvement? And the animals initially added have since been replaced by their offspring in time?
If that is true then the same should apply to plants fish etc., and not only mammals, so if I add two goldfish in my pond and they breed, the rest can be considered wild? Or two budgies in a cage breeding and the offspring being considered wild?
Its quite a paradox
There are definitely some gray areas between wild and captive and I can’t provide a definition that will cover all possibilities. My decision-making comes down to how much human intervention occurs or has occurred in the life of the organism and how much freedom the organism has in carrying out its natural life history. That still leaves some examples that could possibly go either way. When in doubt, I tend towards considering the organism wild.
A game farm - is captive. Those animals are bred for meat or hunting trophies.
Our national parks are Wild. Fenced to protect wild animals from people.
If, as people do, you dump your goldfish or koi in a dam or a stream - then those abandoned pets are sadly Wild. Wild parakeets in London too. We call feral cats and dogs Wild.
the way i see it. cattle owned by someone is definitely captive, even if they graze without a fence. the same goes to, i dunno, sheep, yaks, even buffalo that are used in my country in some areas to keep certain types of environments (grazing to suppress grasses and bushes, good for orchids and many species of butterflies). Game park definitely also has captive animals, even if the same species can be wild elsewhere.
what i sometimes struggle with are trees. in my country, there is very few “wild” forests. is a tree that was planted wild?
I actually had questions about free range cattle on National Forest land. There are some fences in some places, but where I was hiking, these cows technically could have walked right off the mountain and down the street and there is no fence to stop them. Several calves were not even tagged yet.
I also visited a hatchery and saw the fish in the stock tanks, clearly captivated, but outside the stock tanks in streams, and eventually the main river, were the same species that had been released. Were those released fish cultivated? I haven’t even uploaded them because I’m not sure how to mark them.
I think the biggest grey area I’ve seen is the bison on Antelope Island. They’re marked wild in innaturalist, but they’re maintained like cattle, rounded up and culled/sold at auction every year. They’re pretty much stuck on the island, and while they theoretically could walk off on the causeway, they don’t. The entire island feels like one big ranch. In every population of mule deer and pronghorn, too, you’ll see at least one collared and tagged. Only the coyotes seem properly wild.
history of my country in general is that it is a land settled by people for thousands of years and basically all forests were cut down in 17ish century.
there is no true wilderness and being strict i could observe no tree at all.
I have observed both of these animals at National Wildlife Refuges. In neither case were the animals ‘dumped for cheap grazing’. Circumstances may vary by location.
And of course, these types of circumstances (where they are brought onto land for ecological benefit) would be marked captive, imo, regardless of fencing (in both of my encounters, the animals were fenced - but both were in areas where escaping the refuge would be dangerous for the animals and people alike if they were hit by a car).
I did find a chicken in one of the NWRs. That one was presumed dumped since there wasn’t a farm near enough by for the chicken to have escaped on its own.
There are some native plant species that are completely dependent on bovid grazing, historically by bison. With bison functionally/ecologically extinct in most areas of the US, permitting cattle grazing on public lands is in some cases is basically a necessity to maintain the ecosystem (I’m not saying it should be that way).
And I can say from personal experience that there are areas where you can walk up to a fence erected by someone to stop an area from being grazed and one side is full of native wildflowers and the other side is just invasives and grass.
I’m describing the situation here… which is also relevant elsewhere… where cattle grazing on public land via cheap grazing leases that are grandfathered into infinity is part of the perpetuation of a system which ensures votes for the traditionally ruling political party. The resulting ecological damage in the form of the spread of invasive weed species and destruction of water courses is ignored by the government agencies that are supposed to be the stewards of the environment in these areas.
As far as these domestic animals being “dumped” out in these areas, they are walked or trucked in in spring then released and go without human “supervision” until they are rounded up again fall.
I don’t think anyone is confusing this with your examples.
My use of inat is not to catalog instances of biota, but as a tool for conservation.
Where I live, free range, feral and invasive are just about the same thing. The next property introduced dorpers - sheep that need no care and can eat anything. Great for them. The get on to our sanctuary, and the conservation park next door, kill the veg, foul the waterholes, etc, and a long as the neighbour doesn’t have any responsibility, he’s happy to harvest them on his property, but ignore ours.
So from a conservation lens, I’d certainly include ‘free range’.