This is probably an issue with where the conservation status is pulled from, but White-throated Sparrow is definitely not ‘possibly extinct’ in Ohio
I looked it up on the NatureServe portal, it actually does have that status there. That being said, It is clearly an error so I removed the entry.
Fyi if you find future things like this on a species, rather than flagging it here, it is better to go to the taxa page on the site and use the flag for curation dropdown. A much greater number of curators who can act on it will see if there vs on the forum.
@tiwane a minor issue, but if it is geographic specific, should it not read extirpated as opposed to extinct.
We tend to use ‘Regionally Extinct’ for that, at least here in Europe
When you’re looking at those conservation tags for birds, it’s worth remembering that they’re referring to the status as a breeding species. We get the same odd results for several species here in Illinois, for instance Merlin and Sharp-shinned Hawk. Both of them are very rare nesters in the state, but common migrants and regular winter residents. Looking over e-bird results, it appears that White-throated Sparrow is quite rare as a nester, regardless of how common they are as a wintering bird. (I’m not giving an opinion here on how iNat should handle this – I haven’t really got one, frankly.)
hmm, yeah we don’t call state historic species ‘possibly extinct’ in Vermont, a lot of them are hard to ID or find plants that are probably still here, just need to be re-discovered. But, if the term is used differently in different places, it gets hard and confusing.
Then you have an issue of horrible inconsistency. If that is the case, should it not be so marked for pretty much all of the US with the possible exception of northern New England? There is also inconsistency across the same geography as I would assume the same status applies for a lot more northern breeders in the state.
Actually I don’t think it is an error. The conservation status in this case is likely referring to the breeding status.
This is a common issue when converting from conservation statuses for birds developed by conservation data centres (which are often season/life stage specific) to the iNaturalist status. In the case of White-throated Sparrow in Ohio, yes it is a common species, but it is a very rare (probably now extirpated) breeder.
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I dont really see the logic or the educational benefit of marking a species as extinct in an area where it is present in significant numbers for a significant number of months. But if the answer is ‘NatureServe says it is extinct’ then I guess it needs to be put back and my error corrected.
At a minimum there is no reason to obscure it as was done.
It’s not exactly an inconsistency – we’d only see it as “probably extinct” if there were historical records of breeding, but not recent ones. It’s quite possible that a similar status might fit more species in Ohio – I don’t really know those details. But it is important, I think, to make a distinction between breeding and wintering populations, for conservation purposes. They may need different habitat requirements, for instance. But it would make sense to use a different label, to indicate what you’re using. Many bird-specific checklists do just that, I guess from the point of view of an organization with a larger mandate they see it as an otherwise unnecessary complication.
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