Anyone who IDs corvids within the “American-Northwestern crow overlap zone” knows how irritating it is to have one identified as one or the other when they can’t be told apart morphologically. Since iNat finally got around to demoting Northwestern to subspecies, the problem has lessened, but it’s still there. And I think the fact that “Corvus brachyrhynchos caurinus”, the Northwestern Crow, is still shown in the CV suggestions when uploading does not help matters. On one of my recent observations, C.brachyrhynchos caurinus was suggested but C. brachyrhynchos was not! This means that users within the overlap zone will still be likely to select Northwestern and possibly even create observations that are RG at subspecies. I have never seen subspecies suggested before, so is this just a temporary annoyance due to the taxon change, that will be fixed when the next CV training model comes out? If not, why is it occurring and how can it be fixed?
The reason this is happening is because when the CV was last trained C. b. caurinus was a full species but has been demoted since then. When the new CV model comes out it will no longer be a suggestion.
Goes to show that habitat loss, overhunting, etc. are not the only causes of extinction. Northwestern Crow, we hardly knew ye. 
What are you talking about? You know that the Northwestern Crow didn’t go extinct, right? It was just “demoted” to a subspecies?
It feels like an extinction to me. I’m going to miss the Northwestern Crow.
Taxonomists cause extinctions all the time.
Sad about the loss, I might agree. But, I think they prefer to call it a shift ;)
But nothing died! Calling it extinction is misleading. It just has a new name.
A taxonomist contemplates reclassifying the Fish Crow as Corvus brachyrhynchos ossifragus. A Fish Crow hears about this and cries, “Uh-uh! Uh-uh!”
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