For example, if an official government body made a law to protect all orchids in the country and prevent flower picking, should all those species be “obscured” on iNaturalist?
In other words, should all orchid observations in a specific country be obscured, and can this be done by editing the taxon status for the family to affect all species observed in that country?
iNaturalist does have a feature called “geoprivacy” which allows observations to be obscured to protect sensitive species. This can be particularly useful for species that are at risk of poaching or other threats.
To obscure all orchid observations in a specific country, I would wish to edit the taxon geoprivacy settings for the orchid family in that country.
P.S
There are other examples where the answer might differ. For instance, all Mollusca might be protected by law, but this does not necessarily mean their observations need to be obscured. For now, I am focusing on the flora question.
Thank you.
Yes, that is how that works. You can flag the taxa in question and ask for the curator to add/update the status. Please have a source available, and give a justification for obscuring. Obscuring an entire family (and a very large family at that) is a substantial change.
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No, not necessarily - a flag on the taxon is where people can discuss if obscuration is warranted.
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I will also note that higher taxon obscuring seems to be wonky - exceptions don’t seem to work (so the higher taxon obscuring overrides any lower level open statuses). I’ve been meaning to put a feature request in to improve this, but haven’t yet found the time.
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No probably not.
Currently, the official stance is to only obscure locations on taxa that are endangered by humans deliberately seeking them out (basically on any taxon where public knowledge of the whereabouts would increase the threat). That is not the case for every species (even some orchids are kinda ugly and fairly common (Looking at you, Epipactis helleborine)).
So even though it is more work, this should be decided for every species individually.
It probably could, but how would you decide on the status you would use?
The Red Lists I am familiar with don’t apply conservation statuses this general to my knowledge. And I would question the legitimacy and accuracy if one was applied. Every species is endangered (or not endangered) to a different degree. A median conservation status as well as an average one would be nonsense and carry little meaning.
Perhaps a way to solve this, though, would be adding a separate feature for a “protected” status that would just tell you whether a certain taxon is protected by law in a certain place.
There are justified cases where high level taxa are protected. Pangolins (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/43357-Pholidota) are a good example, but CITES has multiple ones (certain groups of parrots I think?). Basically groups that are under such sustained pressure that they should be obscured everywhere.
These are definitely comparatively rare, but they are also some of the taxa where having open locations is most likely to cause the most serious damage. Obscuring at a higher level has the advantage of obscuring observations before they are IDed to species. For instance, if someone uploads a pangolin observation, but only IDed to family, it could be open until IDed to species - anyone who saw the observation before it was IDed would be able to use the location info for any purpose. With the order being obscured, these data have some protection as soon as they are uploaded (assuming the observer initially IDed to order or below).
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True, I hadn’t thought of that, as my primary interest is insects where this isn’t really the case
In any case, though, I don’t think it would be a good idea in this instance