I wanted to make iNat users aware of some active poaching going on in my area, and to raise awareness to be careful of posting geotags publicly. Maybe its bad I made an observation about it, but here it is:
From time to time I have browsed the forum for posts in favor of obscuring observations or keeping them open, the pros and cons, etc. And read a lot of different opinions.
I’ve been the type to keep observations mostly open because I learned a lot through the app, by visiting places I asked other users about etc. And I wanted to return the favor. I didn’t think I was seeing anything too crazy, but now I see how real poaching is, even if I think its such an unusual or BS thing to poach.
I’m sure they found that location in particular because I’ve made observations of the plants from there in the past and the locations were public.
I see that this species has a Threatened status in a couple other states around yours and is obscured in those states, but has no conservation status and presumably defaults to open locations in your state and most others in the area. It looks like it might be worth flagging the species to start a discussion about whether it should be automatically obscured in more states than it currently is?
(FYI typically the forum discourages discussing or linking to specific examples)
Generally we don’t want people posting links to observations that put the obsever or another participant in a negative light. I think this instance is OK, the OP is linking to their own observation.
In your observation you said it was happening in a “Middlesex county green space”. If you haven’t done so, I’d suggest contacting the department or agency responsible for the area about what you saw and give them exact coordinates so they can investigate.
FWIW I know nothing about east coast plants but I don’t see Asclepias amplexicaulis listed as a plant of special concern by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection [PDF], or listed as threatened by NatureServe.
Thank you, do I flag the species in the iNat website or bring it up here on the forum somewhere? In NJ it is ranked S4, which is “near threatened” if I recall correctly.
The Middlesex county green space is basically public land, like parks owned by the county. I have notified the park managers of the area, along with some others in conservation I know.
I did read the disclaimer, but I just want to get it out there to spread awareness of this sort of stuff happening. The only kind of issues I would usually see in regard to plants was mostly mowing, pesticide use, or land development. I never thought I would see blatant poaching like this, especially since I feel I’m not seeing anything too rare, and I’m here to say it does happen.
Sorry if the quoting format looks strange, I’m replying from my phone.
I think what you do is flag the species on iNat, and a curator will look at it. I haven’t flagged species for obscuring their location; I’ve seen a taxon flagged for a new species, and I flag some because the common name in Spanish may be misspelled or something.
Oof. I remember seeing the species down at Franklin Parker with the vague impression that it was somewhat special, but if David Snyder didn’t list it and it’s S4 on NatureServe, I admit I’d have a hard time treating it as a candidate for systematic obscuration versus this being a one-off problem at this location. BONAP shows it through much of the state, although I don’t feel like i see it very often.
If I saw this kind of seed collection here, I would have normally assumed it is done for some official pupose and I would have not first think about poaching.
If you want to propose obscuration for some taxon, you raise a flag for that taxon at iNaturalist. However, even though this incident happened, does it really need to be obscured for the whole state?
This particular species needs sandy environments, so if you go to where it likes it’s probably not too hard to find. They seem to have a decent population in the pine barrens, although I do know there are some populations in northern NJ.
The reason why I know it is poaching and not an official collection is because I know who is behind it. As for if the whole state should be obscured, it might not be a bad idea because when this happened last year they were looking in different parts of the state too.
A lot of people feel that if a species is at risk of poaching, the safest thing to do is not photograph it, not record it, and definitely not post it online. And that instinct makes sense: if fewer people know where something is, then it’s harder for bad actors to exploit it.
On the flip side, habitat destruction is the #1 driver of species loss, and one of the best tools we have to protect habitat is knowledge. If no one knows that a rare species exists in a location — because we never record it — then that area is more likely to get destroyed.
Public records of observations can trigger land protection, environmental assessments, or even conservation funding. So it’s nuanced. Increased visibility can lead to increased protection, in addition to increased risk.
As you said, there are different opinions on this topic. Some folks obscure observations. Others prioritize transparency for conservation reasons. Some species, like orchids or herps, are at a higher risk of collection, while others benefit from more eyes and more attention. Or both at the same time!
I had felt the same sentiment for a long time, that having more eyes on observations would be a good thing in case land development came along. I thought that maybe there was a little too much secrecy with botany. A couple of years ago I had actually seen this happen, I watched some land get developed which had some rare species there. Since no one knew they were there though the whole place got destroyed and is now the site of a warehouse.
As it turns out here in NJ at least, the best thing to protect a sensitive species (aside from not posting it online at all) is to fill out a form for environmental protection with the species, and with coordinates where it was seen. I talked to some people at our environmental protection and they told me that just uploading things to iNaturalist is not enough to protect a threatened species and they wouldn’t be able to use the observation if they had to go to court regarding potential land development.
Personally I’ll be obscuring my observations for now. The clasping milkweed Asclepias amplexicaulis seems weird to take pods at a large scale like that, but the flowers of the plant are showy and I know that was a draw. I wanted my observations to help fellow iNatters, but I feel guilty and partially responsible now that people have been following my observations to take things from the wild like that. When I first saw it happening last year, I was horrified.
I’ve been told the same thing for NC. The Natural Heritage Program tracks some species and they appreciate people reporting observations. They have an iNat project as well but the form is asking for additional info and giving them a point of contact if needed.
I just want to say that I’m sorry this has happened to you. It is a lousy feeling to share things we love and care about only to have someone take advantage of it like this. I haven’t thought of obscuring most things here, but it does make me want to think about it more. I used to share a lot of photos of animal tracks on another platform and stopped when I found out hunters had started following my posts to try and identify the locations.
This is something I’ve also had to grapple with lately. The problem where I am is that the target species for poaching are changing faster than official measures for protection or sensitivity can keep up.
In a recent instance I observed the putative signs of poaching at a location where I had previously made observations of a geophyte species. I might be wrong and I need to return to assess again but I immediately felt so naive that I had not obscured the location. It’s not that it’s incredibly rare or unknown in cultivation but it was a very accessible (relict, isolated) population in an urban area and somewhat biogeographically interesting for that reason.
In the world of the succulent, caudiciform and geophytic plant trade, emphasis is often placed on “wild type” plants showing natural growth forms etc., perhaps this was part of the motivation. Or perhaps just the opportunistic simplicity of harvesting hundreds of mature plants with ease.
In the case of your milkweed, to me it’s obviously exploitative to tape all the seed pods. The guidelines that I am aware of suggest that harvesting fewer than 20% of seeds per plant is considered appropriate. Personally I think the sustainable harvesting of material should be regulated in a common sense way that would exclude both what I saw and what OP saw but allow for ordinary people to engage in a very tangible way with the biodiversity around us. There is a somewhat separate argument around the cultural and religious use of natural material but I think it could be encompassed in a more general framework.
I often walk in areas that have already been graded for development where the most interesting things pop up. These plants have already been forsaken by whatever official authorisation exists and even finding critically endangered species does not halt the process at that point (particularly if the plants cannot be rescued e.g. as bulbs). Harvesting seeds or taking cuttings from these plants during their swan song can’t be wrong but that is the status quo if I am not mistaken.
What I have been grappling with is the role of me as the observer - on the one hand observations of threatened plants haven’t lead to their protection from development and on the other might have lead to their poaching. The rest of us are left in the middle with neither the authority over the land nor the inclination to simply take in a selfish way. Both cases can lead to the loss of a population; very disheartening. I don’t really have a conclusion as its still something I’m mulling over but I have in the meantime obscured some things I thought might be targeted in a similar way but which are otherwise not yet considered to have this threat.
I came across a similar argument in the preface of a book about local orchids. Where I’m now there is not many orchids left because agriculture and development destroyed just about the entire habitat, and almost nobody even knows that native orchids exist, and so nobody has any interest in protecting them. So the point that book author makes is - despite the angry mail he gets by old botany professors - by revealing remaining spots, people have a chance to actually see and appreciate the orchids, and it’s the only chance someone who could protect them will do so.
I used to hide every single of my orchid observations for fear of poaching, but now I don’t obscure at all anymore. If other people start taking orchid pictures and learn to appreciate them because of the spots I found, it makes me happy! (A few species at actual risk of poaching are auto-obscured by inat, and I obscure plants I only found because someone gave me the location, since they might want to keep it secret… but the ones I find myself and are not at risk of poaching, everyone can see!)
From my small expererience of plants being poached - the authorities often pretended there wasn’t a problem, they never heard of it, and if there was it wasn’t big. So documenting as many as possible, especially those that have been poached (felled trees, a hole in a location where they previously were), gives some kind of accountability. At least if they won’t accept it as evidence, people, locals, and conservation groups might find it useful. As for the location, that’s up to you, you can always abscure/make it private now, and then turn it public later if you want.
If you never take the photo you don’t have that option.
I do obscure my orchid obs. But then they are surrounded by UNobscured obs …
Especially since I was told by other hikers, that disas were poached along a dam wall up on Table Mountain. Even sadder when they cleared a drainage channel, and dug up the orchids in the process
This perfectly describes the area this was in. All the plants are also along an old road accessible by bike.
If it were only a couple or a few I wouldn’t have had an issue with it like this. I’m all for propagating and growing native plants. If done right, a ton of plants can come from one or a couple of pods. But because last year they did this with ALL of the pods in the area, and are doing it again with ALL of the pods, it’s just ridiculous. There are even more pods growing than last year and literally all of them were taped shut. Now they’re just being greedy. These are people that claim to love native plants.
This was how I felt with my observations previously, I wanted them to be able to help people out. I actually found out about he place myself because I asked another iNatter about it, and I got to see the plants and learned a lot about seeing them in situ. I know there was a couple of times some researchers went out to visit a site of something I saw. I’m still open to people seeing my observations, but I think I will change my profile later and vet people out if they message me wanting to see something.
Fortunately by doing this exact thing my post seemed to have gained a bit of traction. I got a couple of messages and I also sent the post to people I know in conservation in my area to spread awareness of what’s going on.
This is true, there are other observations that are unobscured over there, but they’re very few compared to what I had posted. There is one plant in particular that they’ve been fixated on, which is bigger and more impressive when in bloom than the others in the area. I had taken pictures of this individual in the past, I feel like maybe if I hadn’t posted those pictures they wouldn’t have been as drawn to visit the area.
Maybe a silver lining is if you have obscured orchids and others in that same area get poached, maybe the one you observed will be spared/is not as attractive as some others posted publicly there.
That’s the thing, I don’t even see anything like orchids. I don’t go out of my way to see them, they’re attractive but not my thing at the moment. I am starting to feel like if it exists, there is a poacher for it.
This is terrible, I didn’t even think about this. Thank you for the FYI, I’ll be obscuring all observations from a trip I did that day, if I saw a wild animal on that trip.
Sad to say, I’m with you there. As infuriating as it is when it seems like every species in a developing nation is a “delicacy” there, at least that can be understood as the survival strategy of a generalist omnivore. But what good it is to increase food security and disposable income if people just switch from “eat everything” to “collect everything”?
If you are sure it’s poachers, would you be comfortable to go and untape all of the pods? I had a situation with a porcupine poacher, where I didn’t feel so safe to confront them, so instead we had this cat-and-mouse where I’d remove the snare and then revisit the site and remove the new replacement snare until they gave up or moved on.
