Sonoyta Pupfish: another wild/captive question topic, sorry!

General
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With deepest apologies for raising the captive/wild question yet again:

I recently visited Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The Sonoyta Pupfish (Cyprinodon eremus) has a very small range, most of which is within the monument property, though I think it is also sometimes found in some farther bodies of water.

The Organ Pipe visitors center has a small nature trail, which goes by a couple of small ponds that were created as an additional habitat for these fish. (https://www.nps.gov/thingstodo/see-endangered-pupfish-along-the-visitor-center-nature-trail.htm)

I snapped a few pics of the fish in these ponds, and submitted some observations, marking them as captive. Later I hiked to the spring that is their natural habitat, and created a few more observations for the fish I saw there, marking them as wild.

Now, looking at all the observations for this species, I see that many of the observations are of fish in the nature trail’s man-made ponds, and are marked as wild (and many are research grade).

So I’m wondering: should my observations of the fish in those ponds be marked as wild, or should all the others be marked as captive?

On the one hand, these are man-made ponds, and the fish were deliberately brought there by people. There is basically no chance that they’d exist in these ponds had they not been brought there. On the other hand, the fish have been there since 2005, presumably reproducing and thriving, so the fish there now aren’t the same ones that were brought there (the rangers have confirmed that the population in the ponds is self-sustaining; they don’t replenish the it by transporting more fish from the spring). But back to the first hand: if the goldfish in my living room aquarium lay eggs, I can’t imagine making an observation for the offspring and marking them as wild just because I didn’t bring them home from the petstore myself.

So I’m confused.

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The most important thing is that you describe the situation in the Notes of your observation. In these situations, field notes along with the observation are hugely important for future researchers.

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This is more of a philosophical question, than a question of data integrity.

@jasonhernandez74 would argue that almost all wildlife is captive in some way, if you take a certain perspective.

As Russell said, detailed notes will help researchers decide whether to include your data.

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I’d count them as wild, under iNaturalist’s definition. Although the founders were initially placed there by people, they have reproduced since then and were released in restored/created habitat, and are not dependent on ongoing daily intervention, unlike:

However, it’s legitimately a grey area. YMMV

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I have to assume these ponds don’t require ongoing continual maintenance in the way that an aquarium does.

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I don’t know. I’d assume they don’t need temperature control, but I’d guess they have some sort of water circulation/filtration setup. I suppose I should have looked more closely while I was there.

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As folks have suggested, I’ve updated the notes in my observations to include more detail about the environment the fish are living in, and marked them as wild.

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For these gray-area type observations, you can always tag-in identifiers and request them to vote wild/not-wild depending on which way you lean.