I would like to add these statuses to the relevant taxa on iNaturalist.
What is the procedure for doing this?
I think I read that it isn’t possible to do this ‘in bulk’, and that we’ll therefore have to do it species by species: if that’s the case, and if there are other volunteers for this time-consuming task, perhaps we could share the work collaboratively, dividing the families amongst us?
One final question: if we manage to integrate this Red List, is it possible to search for records based on a species’ Red List status?
Adding statuses is time-consuming for curators but not too difficult.
But the other relevant information that will be needed is whether to obscure or not, and, if so, the reasoning for doing so and a source. This is the tougher and more time-consuming part of dealing with statuses.
I don’t have a source for this, but I would expect any Saturniidae, Sphingidae, and Catocala should be prioritized for obscuring. These are by far the most traded/sold European moths by for-profit collectors. Most of the other smaller species are not of monetary value, and aren’t likely to be at-risk of over-collecting.
In my view, the issue of taxon obscurity is a separate matter from that of Red List status.
Of course, for certain highly attractive and endangered species, this issue must be addressed, but the vast majority of endangered moth species are not threatened by collectors, but by the destruction of their habitats and various forms of pollution, particularly pesticides.
It is a pity that we cannot already make progress on integrating the Red List status without getting bogged down in the complicated issue of taxon obscurity (as the saying goes, ‘the best is the enemy of the good’).
For my part, I have made progress by adding the GBIF and iNaturalist identifiers to the list (via a SPARQL script on Wikidata): out of the 3,176 taxa, I am only missing 180 GBIF identifiers and 696 iNaturalist identifiers.
And I’ve already started updating Wikidata to add the missing identifiers: this sort of collaborative work is very straightforward, and it could be a good opportunity for those unfamiliar with Wikidata to get started. Missing IDs can be found in the CSV table.
A while back I wanted to try the same with local red lists but couldn’t get it to work. Was a bit more difficult because one half of the table was on one and right side on another page.
I would love if we had some tooling available that would easily allow extracting the data.
I don’t even get why organizations often don’t just release those lists in a maschine-readable form.
When adding a status on iNat, the curator adding it must make a decision about obscuration one way or the other, so I don’t see how
at least in terms of iNat.
Also, I don’t think this
is really fair. Practically, the major impact of the conservation status in terms of iNat is how the status affects obscuration. Outside of that, the only major impacts to adding a status are that it will be listed on one tab of the taxon page (which few users visit) and next to the observation ID (depending on the observation ID and where the observation is located - in some cases a status for a more specific location would be listed). Most people aren’t going to be using iNat as a database for species statuses as it isn’t ideal for/intended as that. They’d check the relevant Red List directly. The status can also be used for some search/filtering and displays in a few other places, but these are aspects of the site used by a small proportion of users based on my experience.
One could use a bulk rule to determine obscuration when adding statuses (e.g., any species at level X or more threatened is obscured), but there are potential downsides to this. This is actually how most statuses were imported to iNat in early days, and I think that this was a reasonable approach to start with based on the precautionary principle. But it also lead to a lot of taxa being unnecessarily obscured, which comes with a clear cost (less useful data for conservation applications). Curators have spent lots of time slowing opening up geoprivacy for those taxa over the years.
So when thinking about any large scale update/addition of statuses, I think it’s very preferable to have a clear and considered approach to determining obscuration for those statuses (which must be done when adding the associated status).
I loved comment by @cthawley, recognising their well-above average voluntary curator efforts in several backend areas who says "Adding statuses is time-consuming for curators but not too difficult. "
May i just point to backlog and continued daily flood of flagged issues sent in for curation which usually builds daily rather than diminishes? Who are you nominating to add 3000 or so of these? Why should volunteer curators be doing tasks that already seem largely automatable and i’d kindly suggest should be staff led. Do staff even see value for adding those?
The issue of whether to obscure or not is a useful issue to discuss, but doesn’t that then already sound like something that can be built in by specialist focal curation beyond the basics of “load them as unobscured” perhpas unless by some other criteria they’re already set as obscured?
Else, for my part, i’ve done a hopefully helpful amount of taxonomic curation on various leps for the iNat taxonomy, and often reset or relinked to wikidata and wikispecies - plus feedback with external "authoritative databases’. Here then, i’m not surprised if there’s some taxa in that checklist where the name is missing from either iNaturalist end or from GBIF, or both, and far more not well linked via wikidata. This is where i think the volunteer community could add weight together to try and resolve those discrepancies we can. I would however note there’s some where the direction of update might remain unclear, many where externally we cannot push anything, and even cases where that source checklist is said to be wrong somehow for the taxonomy. On the last part, i know already a case that was raised as a curator flag just last week where the taxon name on that checklist differered from what seemed defenisble from the other existing literature. But before all that, i’d like to raise questions about what’s already listed on that appendix5.csv(i’ve just retrieved it). On that, all the " GBIF taxon ID numbers are their old numerical format (pre summer 2026), they’ve since shifted to alphanumeric identifiers. Their old and new numbers are of course linked at their end, but also with that change then some massive aspects of their core underlying database changed - so some of their old numbers are now defunct (or rather, what i see as being in an inactive holding pattern), some merged into one revised numbers, others split, etc. I’m also concerned that for one of the first cases i looked at, namely this below the appendix5.csv that says there’s no iNaturalist number, yet i could find it already on the iNat system - is that iNaturalist number missing as it wasn’t already on the wikidata (i.e. missing on Q5319538 but you’re building that and others in), rather an missing at the iNaturalist end?.
No.32 COSSIDAE Dyspessa aculeata
→ No number for iNaturalist
→ GBIF number 1731264
I understand, then, that at present it is not possible to integrate this list automatically, and that doing so would involve too much manual work on the part of the curators.
I will focus on updating Wikidata, and I will also add the alphanumeric identifiers to my CSV file.
Regarding the CSV file, the information currently comes EXCLUSIVELY from Wikidata: I plan to do the same thing by querying the iNaturalist API directly.
So, in cases where there is no iNaturalist identifier but there is a GBIF identifier, it simply means that the Wikidata item is not up to date: you just need to add the missing property (P3151 iNaturalist taxon ID).
In cases where there is no identifier at all, this usually corresponds to synonyms not present in Wikidata (and often to Wikidata not being up to date). This is the case here for example, where Atychia nanetta has become Brachodes gaditana. But in cases like this, I must admit I’m at a loss: I don’t know whether I should create a new Wikidata item or update the old one with the new name.
First point. I’m just one of many who do voluntary curation. Anything i said as reservation was not against the intended direction, i would voice my support of the goal to have addition of those. I would agree those Redlist statuses can add great extra value to the iNaturalist system.
Second point, for wikidata. Thanks for clarifying more on some with gaps in the .csv file you created. i’ve replied on wikidata, but did so on your own userpage. I support your steps so far, i liked your initial intent add any missing iNat number into any existing wikidata. There may be some taxa without an iNaturalist taxon, but myself and others can likely help with them - those ideally should get a ‘flag for curation’ over on the iNaturalist website. Over on wikidata, i’ve essentially said “create a new wikidata for any combination you see as missing there” and hopefully then helped with the “how” question. Then those can be cross-linked to each other and externally to various things, i’ve done a bunch in the past.
Back to the initial reply above you say “at present it is not possible to integrate this list automatically”. Then here i will point to case for example involving (even led by staff) where large numbers of the conservation statuses for various Canadian provinces which seemed to be added by automated or semi-automated procedures. Same seemed the case for many from IUCN. But, i was not involved in any of that. How it was done is beyond me - all i saw was the staff becoming increasingly hands off and unsupportive for batched tasks over the last few years. They may strongly disagree to that sentiment.
without staff involvement. I don’t see it likely being something they’d consider worth it based on past experience but I could be wrong. It just isn’t that many species/statuses.
That said I also don’t think that this
is necessarily true. I just think that there shouldn’t be an expectation for curators to prioritize this work, since it would be many hours. I very much respect that you are taking your own initiative to work on this issue that you care about. You could try reaching out to specific curators on iNat who are interested in leps - maybe they’d be interested in helping/coordinating? The forum has only a small proportion of iNat users, so reach here is limited.
