Trees that were planted, but growing "in wild", should be considered "wild", and additional "grade" for "grey zone" is required

[jasonhernandez74]

@igor117

It’s clearly not about movement, environment is changing around that tree.

Which from a tree’s point of view, has the same effect as the dog moving, i.e. it “moved to” a different habitat.

@igor117

Yellowstone National Park is where people intended it to be, so everything is not wild there.

We have a thread on that very topic regarding Bison. And in that long debate, I sided with those who said that those Bison are, indeed, captive, in that they are not free to migrate or disperse to other places.

But a tree, once sprouted, is never free to migrate to another place, whether planted or wild. So we need a different criterion. And @pfau_tarleton has given us one:

@pfau_tarleton

A dog or cat in the woods cannot be determined to be wild (out there surviving on it’s own) or recently escaped from captivity–and thus that box cannot be checked.

Surviving on its own. That’s a valid criterion for an animal born in captivity but now gone wild; why not for a tree with the same backstory? @Italopithecus says that a feral dog moving around affects its environment; well, how does a longstanding tree not? Its root system, its transpiration rate, its leaf litter, all affect its environment. I see the moving around argument as a false distinction.

@piotr3

Does it mean, that almost every tree in European forests should be marked as “culivated”? That’s the case - forestry in large parts of Europe has used forest tree nurseries and planting trees since at least 19th century.

Thank you. If we marked them all as cultivated, entire habitat types would vanish from the map – even though wildlife are using those allegedly nonexistent habitats.