Would it be helpful to have slightly different guidance for national and sub-national statuses? @jdmore makes a good point regarding NatureServe, but I am not sure if this would apply outside the US/Canada.
Iām not even sure about national. A bunch of the issues in Canada were with species that are rare in the far south of Canada but super common in the US. I imagine in other areas with spatially smaller countries the issue is even greater. While state and national level conservation does make sense for a lot of reasons, it doesnāt seem like thereās ever a point to auto obscure globally common species based on national status. (Unless there are other factors. For instance it may make sense to still do so for many herps)
2 Likes
NatureServe usually lists a global, national and regional rankings. In many cases the number assigned is one and the same. For example this is an open flag species :
This is listed as a 1 at all of the global, national and state levels. It really does matter which one of the three you think is best to consider, but rather should there at least be a review of if this should be open or obscured, and is it better to start with a more cautious or a more open approach.
Bigger issues are cases like the Canada Lynx another species with an open flag. It is listed as globally and nationally secure, but with states with a 1 ranking. Put aside the randomness of the political borders, it seems there are physical places where the species has challenges.
My understanding also is that there is currently no mechanism or requirement for community review if a curator wants to change the obscuring for an existing taxon. There is a guideline to ābe prepared to support why you are doing thisā.
The new guidelines that @cmcheatle and @carrieseltzer are proposing seem very sensible for taxa that donāt already have a conservation status. But there are plenty of taxa with existing obscuration settings that are not well supported, most often because theyāre vulnerable/threatened due to some factor (e.g. habitat loss, climate change) that is not aggravated by exposing detailed distribution info.
It seems that @carrieseltzer has suggested that in these cases curators should be able to go ahead and make carefully considered changes, and that the lack of a formal annotation capability or revision history can be addressed by requiring curators to add a flag documenting the rationale for the change and then immediately resolve the flag. That seems reasonable and not too onerous. If other users disagree with the change, the flag will give them some idea of who made it and why and a community discussion can take place at that point.
The alternative - that a curator should initiate a community discussion before making each change - seems excessive. Even if iNat had a mechanism to handle review, this process would add a lot of bureaucracy to a process that needs to be addressed for many taxa. Without any tools to manage the community discussion, I really think this should be on an āas neededā basis and not mandatory.
4 Likes
Yes.
Whether they are the same as the Global (G) ranks or not, it is the G rank that gets my primary attention, because that speaks more about true conservation concern for the species, whereas the others speak just to local rarity at GADM level 0 or 1 scales. Every species is locally rare somewhere. (Yeah, maybe we can think of a few exceptions to prove the rule 
)
I agree, National NatureServe (N) ranks have the same pitfalls as subnational (S) ranks ā they are defined by rarity within a political jurisdiction.
National Red Lists (or equivalents) may or may not be a different thing. It depends on the legal framework under which they are established. If they are just recognizing everything that is N1 or N2 in a nation, for example, then they are just signifying rarity inside a political boundary by a different name.
On the other hand, if presence on a Red List equivalent comes with specific legal protections and/or expenditures of public funds, that suggests more of a real conservation concern, which should then be assessed to see if knowledge of exact locations would increase (or not) those concerns.
For example, the national Red List equivalent in the U.S. is the federal list of threatened and endangered species created under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Those species have specific legal protections, and considerable public funds have been expended just getting them onto that list, if not for subsequent protection and management. In cases like that, I would tend to err on the side of initial obscuration, though there will still be some for which obscuration does not aid in their conservation. But if a species is merely N1 in the U.S., and not federally listed or proposed, I would tend to err on the side of initial open geoprivacy, with the burden of proof being on anyone who thinks it should be obscured.
Same reasoning would apply for any GADM level 1 Red Lists or equivalents, like some U.S. states that provide their own legal protections for certain species based on endangerment concerns (but not when based on game status or the like).
3 Likes
This would be a bit of a kludge, but in the absence of a better tracking system for changes to taxa generally, itās probably the best alternative.
4 Likes
āI would tend to err on the side of initial open geoprivacy, with the burden of proof being on anyone who thinks it should be obscured.ā (from comment 84 in the thread, sorry do not know how to edit an existing comment to make it appear as a quote)
I have to be honest, I am struggling to conceptualize what the risks or damage is if an obscure moss or insect that no one is submitting observations of that has been assessed by local experts as CR or EN is initially set to obscured by this proposal.
If it catches things that are being observed, history shows us that people will flag it or raise it for discussion pretty quickly and they can get changed as appropriate.
On the other hand, it is easy to conceptualize what the potential damage is of continuing to leave things that legitimately are at risk wide open as is the case right now in far too many places around the world.
I read @boutelouaās comment as relating to the need for a curator to open a discussion (where?) before changing the obscuration status of an existing taxon. That seems onerous, especially when thereās no mechanism to do that.
I donāt believe anyone is objecting to new CR or EN taxa being loaded as obscured. That makes sense.
Iāve added a 2nd quote for context to my note above, sorry I do not know how to add a 2nd quoted block into an existing comment.
[EDITED] I see that extra quote now. In that case I disagree with the blanket statement that for all species iNat should āerr on the side of initial open geoprivacyā. I think obscuration is a reasonable default for CR and EN taxa.
[NOTE: That statement wasnāt by @bouteloua and the context of @jdmoreās statement makes cleat that he was advocating āinitial open geoprivacyā specifically for N1 species not listed or proposed for listing under the Federal Endangered Species Act.]
Just note it is not her comment.
Yes, I was referring to any processes for changing existing statuses. The proposal made it seem like there is one, but there isnāt.
You can just highlight the text to be quoted, press quote, and it will add the quote code to your existing draft comment (wherever your cursor is).
Just to reiterate what the proposal that Carrie and I put forward is :
āThese guidelines would not apply to existing entries or call for any changes to data, conservation statuses or obscuring already done.ā
It is meant to exclusively cover adding data that is not already present.
Aha, I found that quote now.
@jdmoreās logic is actually more nuanced than I understood from the shorter quote, and it seems to be:
-
Species on the U.S. Federal endangered species list or an equivalent national red list should have a presumption to be obscured. They can be unobscured on a case-by-case basis where review shows that there are no major threats exacerbated by detailed location info.
-
Species listed āmerely N1 in the U.S., and not federally listed or proposedā should have a presumption to be
obscuredopen. They can be obscured on a case-by-case basis where review shows that they face threats exacerbated by detailed location info.
I see 5197 species listed by NatureServe N1 in the United States. If anyone is able to sample that list and see whether there are any obviously problematic species that have N1 status but arenāt on the endangered species list, that could be useful.
[Edited to better reflect earlier comment]
I think you wanted to say āpresumption to be openā here, if you were summarizing my thoughtsā¦
4 Likes
Youāre right. Iāll edit that!
2 Likes
I hope this does not devolve into a revisit of the past discussions over whether species obscurations should or should not take place, because thatās not the aim.
I was checking to see if species that are protected locally are still obscured, and I found that they are not. This seems like it may be an oversight. There are many species that are LC globally, but are Near Threatened up to Endangered regionally (by country), especially in areas regions where poaching is common.
It seems that if we are going to be obscuring protected species there should be some consideration given to national status as well.
An example of this is the Golden Birdwing (Troides aeacus), a type of butterfly, in Vietnam. This is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List, but it is considered a CITES II species is included in the Red Data Book of Vietnam (periodic publication that lists protected species in the country).
None of the observations of Troides aceacus in Vietnam are obscured, even though nationally itās considered a protected species.
There are a number of other species like this not only for Vietnam, but for many other places as well, particularity in SE Asia.
I think itās worth considering whether an effort should be made to initiate country-by-country observation obscurations based on whether a species is protected nationally, and not just relying on groups like the IUCN to determine status.
Iām really not trying to start a pros-and-cons of observation obscurations in genral discussion, those have been had numerous times in the past, but I think there is some value in discussion how we support national protection efforts, not just international ones.
3 Likes
@earthknight I moved your post into this existing topic which is addressing the same concerns. For example, see this post above.
1 Like
I saw that, thanks.
The only issue with long threads like this is that things tend to get deeply buried and the topic sort of lost as the thread evolves.
I certainly see the need for consolidation though.
4 Likes