Hello there ^^
I’m sorry if this was already answered somewhere but I couldn’t find the information.
What is the policy on observations made in restored ecosystems? Should they be classified as “wild” or “captive/cultivated”?
I am thinking of specific examples, such as a small island that was deforested at around 90%, and more than a decade ago was restored through massive planting of trees and plants (local species only). It was then left on its own since without anymore human intervention.
Another example would be underwater coral reef restoration after decades of destruction through dynamite fishing. If there is human intervention to restore those reef by “planting” coral fragments coming from the same site or a close by site, when do we consider observations of these corals as “wild” if ever ?
To widen the discussion, most forests around the world where replanted by humans at some point or another. What is the policy of iNaturalists on classifying tree species from these forests as wild ?
Thank you in advance ^^
if the individual was planted, it is cultivated in perpetuity. If new plants self-seed from those original plants, they are wild
Thank you for your answer.
The problem is, as an outside observer, how would you know ? If you are only aware of the history of the ecosystem but not of which individuals were planted. After a few years or decades it becomes very difficult or even impossible to know if the specific individual you are looking at was planted or not.
It is a very practical question for me at the moment.
I was also thinking that encompassing observations made in those specific environment in an iNaturalist project would provide some sort of enclosure, or at the very least information on the history of the ecosystem. However this doesn’t solve the specific question of the “captive / cultivated” checkbox.
This would be so much easier if we were talking about gardening imported species, but in the case of most restoration projects, the goal is in fact to plant/reseed local organisms that were most likely already present in order to increase their numbers. And, if made correctly, after a few years, it should not be possible to differentiate between the restored ecosystem and the untouched one just next to it.
that’s correct, so in those cases you make a judgement call
It’s tricky. For gray areas like these situations, I usually pose the question, “Is this spreading beyond the original “planting”?” And you just try your best. What’s really valuable, by the way, is including, in text, any information that you do know about the history of the site, (e.g. an interpretive sign detailing the restoration project, etc.).
This is my personal take, and it might cause some headbutting. In my eyes, anything that is not actively being maintained and nurtured by humans counts as wild. I’ll give two very specific personal examples.
- I worked in Alabama this summer as an avian ecologist. Even though my job was to count birds at specific locations on WMA land, I took any opportunity to iNat local flora. Thing is nearly all public land in Alabama is “reclaimed” land. The US or state government bought the land after it have already been previously owned, logged, homesteaded, etc. And several of these WMAs were pine plantations up to the 1990’s, so we are doing surveys in the “wild”, but all the pines are in perfect straight rows. But no matter how you slice it or dice, the ratio between human-planted to natural seedings is impossible to determine, so I would say as long as the subjects include native species that are not actively being influenced by humans should count as wild.
- In my home state of Oregon, we run into a similar issue, but the lines get a lot blurrier than some of the “clear” plantations in Alabama. Nearly all forests in Oregon under 5,000 ft elevation has been logged in the last 200 years. State law also requires that for every tree logged, two saplings have to be planted near the stump of the logged tree. And because this practice is decades old, we do have large swarths of forests that are nearly entirely human-planted, but you can’t tell because they’re simply planting trees where the stump is, not in systematic gridlines. But the habitat hasn’t changed, and the species are still the same, so why not be considered wild?
On a related note, if a bioblitz run in a (largely) natural area records an individual plant that you know was planted there, should you mark it as cultivated? In some cases, this may exclude the observation from an associated project.
yes you should
My view on this it is not such a big deal whichever way you call it. Other posters here have provided examples, e.g planting endemic species as a forestry practice. Exotic,- feral species are considered wild if they are not obviously planted or maintained. If it is obvious that an organism is planted, cultivated mark it as such. Where it is unclear whether thing in question got there by natural regeneration or otherwise, I would not mark it as a casual observation.
But considering that an ecosystem consists of more than the plants, we run into the problem of mobile cultivated organisms if we start being literal with the iNat definitions of wild/cultivated. We (in Finland) have a lot of salmon and zander for example, that have been raised in captivity, and then released into an area to boost the local population and restore the viability of the species damaged by overfishing or damming of rivers with the dams removed decades later.
The ecosystem is a restored one as far as you count one ecosystem to comprise of, but there is no way you can determine which individual fishes were raised in captivity and brought there by humans, and which were not. The exception would be the few tagged individuals used to track spreading.
Another case would be ladybugs raised and used as a biological pesticide.
But yeah, this is a good question, and a topic that needs to be kept in constant re-evaluation and discussion.
There is an earlier thread - truck crashed - their load of fish for reintroduction escaped.
Only on iNat would we be discussing. Are the fish now Wild escapees? Or Captive but escaped?
My very practical approach has been, if I can’t tell that an individual in question was put there by humans, then I assume it is wild (the iNat default), and I don’t mark it either way. In the absence of evidence, I try not to assert things as if the evidence existed.
That would be enough evidence for me to mark any of those individuals as cultivated (but not their offspring if any).
For reforested areas on the order of a decade or so old, it should be fairly easy to deduce if a tree is first generation. Natural history information should provide an idea on growth rates and number of years required to produce fruit. You can then infer the approximate age of the tree and how close it’s germination coincides with the site’s restoration. For shrubs with more rapid maturation it may be more difficult. Annuals should be easy but perennials you would need to know the species originally planted and make a judgement call.
All this gets more problematic the older the reforestation site but if you see trees and shrubs of multiple generations, you could infer at least some of them are wild.
The coral question has not been asked before. The growth of a coral head is different from the growth of a tree in that each polyp is technically a separate individual animal (even though they are all clones).
I think this is a very American question. We have an idea of Wilderness that most places don’t. But our ecosystems were managed for thousands of years by Native Americans, which created the ecosystems we inherited and largely disrupted. Just about anywhere in Europe or the Middle East you will have a hard time finding any plant that wasn’t somehow selected for by people over thousands of years.
I’m not sure it matters, actually. Unless you are clearly in a garden.
And I just don’t see it that way. Below is a photo of the forest I worked in for about a month. This forest is the closest we’re going to get in the South for a pre-colonial habitat, so if anything this is more “natural” than any forest that wasn’t directly influenced by humans (assuming you can even find one).
it’s not really a negative judgment (which it seems how you’re perceiving it?) thought iNat can make it see that way with a “Casual” label. If it appears to have been planted like these pines in rows, it should be marked as planted.
When a forest like this is considered to be ecologically the same as a collection of houseplants, I would say that is a negative judgment ragarding the value of the observation.
That’s kind of the idea I’m trying to illustrate. If the connotation is that no human planted organisms count as RG, then nearly all trees in the eastern US fall under this category since nearly all virgin forests have been logged or replanted at some point in the eastern US.