I have to respectfully disagree. I have been doing personal research on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker for almost a year now, and I have found an amazing amount of evidence for the persistence of the IBWO, from both professional searches as well as amateurs. The current persistence of the Ivory-bill is what I am researching now, but their persistence up to 2010 is almost guaranteed in my mind. I am just saying that why can’t a species be protected if there is no amazing evidence of this species. If they do somehow persist, then they should be protected until the possible population can recover to the point of detection.
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It’s not the first big bird that was thought to be extinct, luckily there’re still remote forests where they still can breed and not be noticed by humans as places are inaccessible.
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I’ve still got a T-shirt in my closet from about 2005 that celebrates the rediscovery of the IBWO. (It’s right next to the T-shirt that celebrates the Buffalo Bills winning the Super Bowl.)
Added note: the Bills never won a Super Bowl.
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Still no clear answer as to why a species currently obscured needs to be de-obscured.
I can’t think of a reason a species should be auto-obscured unless under threat from poaching or disturbance, which most of the currently auto-obscured species aren’t. It causes issues for researchers who want to know are studying these species, which can be especially devastating as many of these species are in decline.
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There is a huge backload of flagged taxa, all asking if a bird species can be globally obscured or remove global obscurity, all in concordance to the eBird’s “Sensitive Species”. The purpose of this list on this external source is protect the particularly sensitive species from poaching, illegal pet trading, nest disturbance and bad ethic birding. Examples of this include Great Gray Owls, Gyrfalcons and nearly all of South American parrots.
To elaborate more, iNat does not globally obscure Great Gray Owl postings, so a poster can submit the exact GPS location and subject the bird to illegal baiting for photographs or disturbance. On the other hand, the Virginia Rail are globally obscured on iNat but is not a Sensitive Species.
Should we partner up with ebird and follow suit on their list? The big pro in my opinion is that many birders use both iNat and eBird. Though a potential harmer of the bird may not get the precise information on a sighting on eBird, he could just go to iNat and get the location.
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I think each species should be evaluated for each region independent of eBird’s decisions. For example, in most regions where Great Grey Owl occurs, there’s barely any people living nearby so they aren’t at risk of excessive disturbance. There are only issues when one comes further south than usual to urban areas. eBird obscuring locations for the entire world, and for records from decades ago, seems excessive to me.
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I’ll say again: eBird’s approach to obscuring species is not evidence based in my region of North America.
All observations of Great Gray Owl - a species of Least Concern in this jurisdiction - are censored based on the demonstrably-false premise that the species is being actively harassed by birders/photographers here. As @upupa-epops points out,
That’s certainly the case in the Districts of Kenora and Rainy River, which together are 425,000 square kilometres of sparsely-populated wilderness with limited road access.
I am still waiting for pro-eBird posters to produce evidence that harassment of Great Gray Owls by birders/photographers is actively occurring in the Districts of Kenora and Rainy River, and, that this evidence proves a direct causal link between the disclosure of Great Gray Owl locations on citizen science websites and any measurable decline in GGOW populations here.
At the same time, the Lake of the Woods nesting locations of Piping Plovers - a Critically-Imperiled species in this jurisdiction - are publicly visible in eBird. I have already provided links earlier in this thread describing the effect of nest disturbance on Piping Plovers. eBird has chosen not to protect these endangered birds in my area.
Regarding Virginia Rail…according to iNat, this species has a negative conservation status in many jurisdictions, including 26 U.S. states. I have no horse in that race. Decisions on censoring Virginia Rail locations should be made by people in those areas.
So: under no circumstances should iNat follow eBird’s lead in my region. Decisions are not evidence based unless a) there’s evidence and b) the evidence justifies the decision in every relevant context. On this issue, context is everything.
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GGO is harassed by birds and photographers almost everywhere both it and people occur side by side. It’s simply easier to hide it everywhere than to make to make exceptions for portions of Ontario and the like.
I am also not advocating that iNat follow eBird EXACTLY. But I do think far too many birds are obscured in iNat and a simple and effective fix would be to follow eBird for the most part. I think starting there would be good, then we can obscure/unobscure species as we see fit.
But regardless, remember that we can’t do anything in Canada.
Following local red books should be prioritised imo, there’re too many locally endangered species without hidden coordinates.
So here’s my experience with the previous mentioned species, the Great Gray Owl. I live in northeastern Oregon or the Blue Mountain region. My county has the “highest concentration” of Great Gray Owls in the world, approximately one pair per 4 square miles in appropriate habitat. I was shown the location of two nests by the local university professor as long as I followed one rule: Do not post to ebird. This was before eBird created the Sensitive Species list.
Last year, I went up to check on a nest and a group from California was in the area and one photographer was about 60 yards from the nest. Momma owl wasn’t all that concerned with us there but I politely warned the group that these owls are prone to disturbance and we should best view them from the road. Besides we’re at eyelevel with the nest if we’re on the road. They didn’t know and quickly agreed to my terms. So I think there’s a huge difference between bad birding ethics and simply not knowing.
On the other hand, I was told this story from a guy from Portland, he is often called the Owl Guy for his exceptional abilities. A friend of his found a GGOW nest in the Washington Blue Mts. He went to that nest and showed the nest to a local birder that has a high reputation as a scientist and expert birder. The every next week, the Owl Guy went back to the nest and saw that the local birder brought at least a hundred people to this small canyon the owls were nesting in. I cannot quote him because of language reasons but he said from that moment on, he does not trust any birders, no matter how “good” their reputation looks. Lucky for us, that owl pair are still nesting in the same tree year after year and I been visiting them for the last two.
But here is something to also consider when deciding if a species should be globally obscured or not. I call it common sense because it should dictate that the poster should obscure the sighting. There’s quite a few GGOW sightings in Oregon and all of them are either obscured or the location accuracy so broad, it’s practically as good as obscured. Though there’s still a point on those observations, I know the area and I know you won’t find a GGOW in the “exact” point of the observation.
Until the site develops a standard framework or starting point for which ones need obscuring and which don’t (say for example anything threatened or worse by default starts as obscured, which can then be discussed and changed based on documented community review), this simply isn’t going to happen. And I say that sadly as I have been perhaps the loudest and most consistent voice on the site over the past few years trying to get better incorporation of local red lists .
No curator is going to allocate time to enter these lists (which have to be done manually and one at a time) only to have another person who disagrees if something should be obscured or not unilaterally undo it.
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The issue here is that most of these species will have no reason to be obscured, and obscuring threatened species that do not need to be obscured has potential to do more harm than good.
It should defiinetely be someone whose actions will be undoable by regular curator as it definitely can lead to some changing wars.
The issue here is that most of these species will have no reason to be obscured, and obscuring threatened species that do not need to be obscured has potential to do more harm than good.
We definitely should think about which categories are needed to be obscured, in towns there’re some common species in red books, it’s uderstadable that obscuring them is not needed, but there’re also some endemic species that are threatened by multiple reasons, including harvesting or poaching and they’re not under IUCN, so they’re open on the map. I like having less obscured species, but I like having a system too, we’re having Common Pochard obscured with millions of specimens but declining trend of population, but also we have Flamingo that is under many convictions, in e.g. Red Book of Russia, but it’s not obscured or local examples as Yellow Iris in Crimea which is in category 1 of local Red Book, almost extinct, and of course it’s not obscured as in most part of its range it’s a common plant. I understand it is a big work to do, but also it is a good work to do, also it can help to get species unobscured on territories where it’s not needed.
There’s no such thing, it would require completely rewriting the entire permissions / obscuring system. Even if entered by a site staff member, it can simply be removed by a curator unilaterally who disagrees.
Well, if some taxa are restricted to one curator and we have countries where obsuration is restricted is it possible to create restrictions of changing taxa status? I don’t think it should be one person, it’s impossible to do, but it shouldn’t be changed without discussion.
Anything is possible, it is a matter of if the site decides it is something they want to implement, and allocate development resources to.
Even locked taxa that exist now (birds, mammals etc), any curator can still change geoprivacy on these groups. Changes here are not considered changes to the taxonomy, which is what is restricted.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/batch-adding-redlisted-species/18681/3
Well, if now I don’t see that obscuration is chaning a lot, maybe it’d be okay to leave the system as it is, to get less arguments we should focus on the most critical taxa, epening on how regional books are structured it should be something like 0-extinct and 1-2 of rarest categories be obscured.
I agree that GGOW should be obscured in the US. But the vast majority of the species’ range is in the remote boreal forest in Canada and Russia.
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I see where you’re getting at. In my personal experience with owls across the Pacific Northwest, I would think Long-eared Owls and Snowy Owls are more prone to disturbance than Great Gray or Northern Hawk-Owl. Even Northern Saw-whet is getting up on that list.
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