Updates to conservation statuses in progress in Canada

News and Updates
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I would actually hope the opposite. I can reluctantly accept not being able to overrule NatureServe decisions about what to obscure. However, if say the iNat community decided it wanted to adopt the Ebird model and obscure owls, either in Canada, or even globally even if NatureServe has decided not to, I fail to see how that is NatureServe’s business.

I guess I don’t see any plausible situation where NatureServe is going to say “no that shouldn’t be obscured”, so it’s probably a moot point. I’m more concerned about curators unilaterally obscuring stuff.

If nothing else comes from this, and it becomes clear that the Ontario CDC has no intention of participating in the process at all (which seems pretty clear to me by now), hopefully we can create a thread on the forum and have a centralised place to work through any changes by consensus.

I compared the taxon geoprivacy of three species noted above for production (the live site) and gorilla (data not updated since mid-March). Asclepias hirtella and Silphium laciniatum were both open on gorilla, but Trillium flexipes was obscured.

I don’t understand how this is possible? There should not have been any S1 species that were open in Mid-March by my understanding, as all species with a conservation status were obscured in early March.

It brings home the point that conservation status and obscuring need are very different. Many rare species especially locally rare ones have no reason to be obscured and some species that don’t yet have conservation status need to be obscured.

Should note that the trillium is both S1 and a legally protected Species At Risk so that isn’t what’s going on here.

any idea when NatureServe and/or the Ontario NHIC will be able to provide more info, if not a comprehensive response?

I’m not sure that any of this really comes down to Natureserve or any other outside body. They have no obligation to do the work for iNat and so far it isn’t clear that they have or will do any in Ontario. Hopefully in the future for other jurisdictions though, iNat will recognise when this has happened and not implement their non-suggestions anyways.

We’re the guinea pig here and that’s fine - as long as the lessons are actually learned.

If no response is provided to the curator by the CDC within 10 business days, the curator may proceed with the change to taxon geoprivacy and will confirm the details of their update(s) by email to Allison Siemens-Worsley.

If nobody has been able to say “no, Long-tailed Duck obviously doesn’t need to be obscured” in the last 9 months (https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/1916), I’m not expecting a response in the next 7 business days. If anyone reading this has any comments on the bird changes I described above, please let me know soon before I can start implementing the changes after June 4th.

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The list seems reasonable to me, the only comment I would make is I’m not sure I would place King and Yellow Rails in different classifications.

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yeah, i wasn’t referring to that. I agree with this trillium species should be auto obscured.

i should start looking at the plant list too, at least the really absurd ones.

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Yellow Rail nests almost entirely in completely inaccessible parts of Ontario. Whereas King Rail is much rarer and is found in readily visited spots. But if people think there’s a risk I can leave Yellow obscured.

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i should start looking at the plant list too, at least the really absurd ones.

I am planning to after this bird stuff if nobody else does - one thing at a time!

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yeah, i am reluctant in art because i do not live in Ontario so have to get involved in your obscuring statuses having only been there a few times. But i can at least help and let you know which of these species are super common in New England and not high-value forage-ables, and thus don’t have any collection risk

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I would like to take this opportunity to address some concerns here and to remind everyone of where we started.

NatureServe Canada is one of the founding partners of iNaturalist.ca and as such is part of the iNaturalist.ca Steering Committee. The decision to involve NatureServe Canada and our network of CDCs in the approach for auto-obscuring records came about because of the same concerns all of you have…. Namely that species were being obscured that should not be, and it was negatively affecting how useful the data could be.

The species previously being obscured were chosen by iNaturalist staff with no input or consultation by NatureServe Canada or iNaturalist users. iNaturalist staff obscured species with a rank of S1-S3 taken from NatureServe Explorer as well as for IUCN red list species (which is still in effect). Let me re-iterate that: species to be obscured were chosen by iNaturalist without outside input and ranks were taken from NatureServe Explorer. This was a great starting point for iNaturalist and a logical way to do things. iNaturalist (very appropriately) was putting into place measures to protect sensitive species that their platform may otherwise have endangered. In other words they were doing their due diligence and putting protective measures in place.

As time went on and iNaturalist.org and .ca became more and more widely used (use in Canada went up something like 600% in 2018!) the species being obscured and their ranks became outdated. As mentioned some curators began to piecemeal change obscuring but again with no consultation of public or other experts (I know many curators are great experts in their area of interest and I completely respect that knowledge base). It came to the attention of CDCs that not only were species being obscured without a formal documented approach but also that the NatureServe ranks were outdated and incorrect, and species were incorrectly being obscured.

NatureServe Canada approached iNaturalist and the entire iNat.ca Steering Committee with this problem and the solution developed (over much time and discussion) was for CDCs to take on their own jurisdictions and prepare a list of species to be obscured by iNaturalist within that province in Canada. The decision was also made to not have any species obscured at a National level. That is no species even N1, N2 are being obscured nationally, which would enforce that obscuring on every province and territory. Conversations with Quebec CDC are also currently underway to have them review the obscured species in QC.

The definition of what is a “sensitive species” is different for every organization and there is not really any defined rules or mandatory consensus. I’m not talking just between individual CDCs and provincial governments (which in most cases CDCs have to answer to the provincial regulatory body) but with a wider cast of organizations like COSEWIC as well. We are working towards achieving that consensus and a true definition of what sensitive means within NatureServe Canada so that we can continue to be a consistent and reliable with this important terminology.

While not yet perfect, we are always striving to do better, this is the process that has been put in place for now. The “rule” for obscuring species is that any issue with obscuration is to be emailed to me (aworsley@natureserve.ca) with a list of species by scientific name and the jurisdiction they are (or are not) being obscured in. I will forward the concern on to the relevant point people in that province/territory and they then have 10 business days to get a response back to you/ engage in meaningful dialogue with that will ultimately yield a desirable result by both parties. If no response from the CDC is received by the curator within the 10 days the curator is able to make the change themselves but must inform me of what action has been taken. Those are the rules as written in the curator guide.

I would like to remind everyone that for the majority of Canada the number of species being obscured has been VASTLY reduced. Because Ontario is a large province with a large population and thus has a large amount of iNaturalist observations, their decision to remain obscuring their “tracked species” does make an impact on the iNaturalist community.

There seems to be a misconception that ONHIC just “didn’t care” when it was their turn to develop an obscuring list. That is absolutely not the case and they put as much thought into it as any other CDC and chose to REMAIN (remember that was also iNat’s previous decision) obscuring a large portion of “sensitive/rare” species. ONHIC staff are currently reviewing this thread and having internal discussions about this topic and will prepare a response to the iNat community. They are aware of the issues and challenges of obscuring or not obscuring and are not trying to negatively impact the iNaturalist community.

I hope everyone can agree that this process is far better than what was in place using outdated, incorrect information. It is not appropriate for iNaturalist to take on this task of assigning obscured status to species when they are not the experts on these areas or these species. Likewise it is not sustainable nor manageable to have curators change obscuring wherever and whenever based on only their knowledge and opinion on a species by species basis.

I, and we at NSC, value the vast knowledge base of iNat users and want to work hand – in – hand with the iNat community. That is why this is all being discussed publicly and openly, and the process has been very transparent. I appreciate the discussions here and some very valid points have been brought up. I look forward to more discussions.

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Thanks for the response Allison,

This all sounds great, and makes sense. But it just doesn’t jive with the reality that a bunch of completely ridiculous stuff has been obscured in Ontario. I’m looking forward to hearing what they have to say but I cannot see what possible justification there could be for just obscuring based on rarity/SAR status rather than actually considering each species. Apparently it’s not because they didn’t care or didn’t have time/resources, and that’s the only explanation I had. This “misconception” you describe above has originated because it’s the only reasonable explanation that anybody has mentioned.

If the existing obscuration statuses on iNat (many of which were changed by NHIC staff!!!) had been used as a starting point, I would have no problem with the process so far. If NHIC had actually gone through and used their knowledge of each species to make decisions, I also would have no problem with the process so far. If Natureserve had told the Ontario NHIC “You can’t just obscure everything rare, that’s not the point of what we’re doing here”, I would have no problem. If iNat admins had told Natureserve “Ontario needs to actually make decisions if they want to contribute, they can’t just obscure everything rare”, I would have no problem. But none of those things have happened, and I don’t understand why.

I’d brought this up in the original GitHub thread/email conversation months ago, I brought it up in my first post in this thread, and it’s been reiterated here many times. Why has Ontario NHIC decided to obscure everything rare/SAR even where it’s obviously stupid, and why have they been allowed to do so?

This is the question I’ve had from the start and I still have not seen any answer to it.

…

That is absolutely not the case and they put as much thought into it as any other CDC and chose to REMAIN (remember that was also iNat’s previous decision) obscuring a large portion of “sensitive/rare” species.

I don’t think this is a completely fair way to portray what has happened here. The curator guide has long said:

However, if in rare situations these species are thought to be in VERY LITTLE DANGER from exploitation due to the public’s knowledge of the location of these species, curators are advised to change the geoprivacy value associated with the conservation status from ‘obscured’ to ‘open’ on the taxon edit page.

And that’s what had happened. Up until early March, most of the birds I described above as well as various other species were not obscured. As a result of NHIC’s decision, they are now obscured.

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Thanks for your response!

This confuses me. I’m not sure about Canada specifically but I’ve been on Inaturalist since 2011 and there was never blanket obscuring of all special status species. The process was not great as you say as it was somewhat arbitrary. But the point was to obscure things due to collection or harassment risk not local rarity. I’m not sure where this confusion is coming from but I’m certain of this as I use the data extensively.

Yeah, as mentioned above this wasn’t an inat policy so I’m not sure where the disconnect is. Maybe I’m just misunderstanding something.

This obscuring of common species really does have a huge impact on inat including those of us using it for applied ecology. I would hope there’d be some community discussion and involvement and explanation for such a dramatic change of policy (which for the site as a whole it definitely is). It’s very concerning as without understanding the reasoning or being able to see a clear reason for this I worry that other branches of natureserve may try to do the same and the data I’ve been using so extensively will just disappear one day as this did. Some people like me have spent almost a decade and countless hours being part of this open data biodiversity project and having a huge chunk of data taken away - and at that without a clear policy (so big concern that it will “spread” to other areas) - is very upsetting and concerning. A lot of us work within conservation fields either on an “official” scale or in a community scale as well. So I’m posting as someone who works on monitoring and conserving wetlands with red spruce who has had red spruce data hidden due to an ecologically arbitrary boundary. Our primary concern is always the resource itself. That’s true for all of us I think. But obscuring common species on edges of their range is a detriment to conservation not a help. Community based conservation, which is what iNat facilitates, has been the most effective approach time and time again.

I’m not trying to be a rabble rouser I am trying to advocate for and protect an incredibly powerful conservation tool I use every day for real applied conservation work. I can’t really use the obscured locations so now there’s a big hole in our understanding of red spruce ecology and the reasoning behind it is confusing. I’m hoping as someone working for the same goals we can fix this or at least have some direct communication from the people doing this. And also some assurances that inat won’t just hand the keys to our data over to an external organization (albeit an important and respected one but…)

Thank you!

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Thank you Reuven and Charlie for your responses.
There does for sure seem to be a miscommunication in how iNat obscured species previously. I (and we at NSC) were told by iNat staff @carrieseltzer @loarie that that was how it was originally done. Perhaps for very high use areas like Ontario the subsequent unobscuring and obscuring by curators was done so frequently and for so long that it actually did not reflect those original lists of S1-S3 species anymore. We were given lists of all currently obscured species by region but because of taxonomic alignment issues the CDCs could not just review every species on the list and then add where missing, that would have taken a huge amount of effort as the ranks were so incredibly outdated. So instead they started with making “fresh” obscure lists.

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Taken from the original post on this thread by Carrie and myself.

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Hmm, I guess you are just talking about the Canada portal. But I’m talking about the site as a whole, which has been around since 2008. The portals are relatively recent additions and I wasn’t aware of any of them imposing such a policy. I’m not sure how to rectify that with the site as a whole either. I’m very concerned about data disappearing this way as was the case at some point (I guess when the Canada portal was created)?

I also want to be very clear I am not anti-NatureServe. I’ve worked within or with Heritage network entities for many years (though not currently) and NatureServe is a great organization. I’m just not ready to accept giving one NatureServe/Heritage portal veto power over huge amounts of spatial data when it clearly runs contrary to conservation of the species, as well as the spirit and function of this community. I don’t think iNat should be getting involved in how BIOTICS works and conversely, i don’t think NatureServe should get veto power for spatial data on iNat of common species with no conceivable collection risk. I also think it’s a really dangerous precedent. What if something changes in NatureServe and next they demand to obscure everything? Or what if the obscure by date thing eventually happens? Either one would break our ability to do a bunch of different conservation work we are doing. I’m actively lobbying community groups, naturalists, etc to use iNat and if the data gets taken away, it will have been a huge waste of time. And i don’t intend to rehash the debate from elsewhere but yes, for what I am doing, the obscuring basically breaks the data for me.

In short, NatureServe and iNat are two parallel organizations with similar goals but different methodology and uses. Collaboration between the two organizatons is a Really Good Thing but this doesn’t feel like collaboration, it feels like …something else.

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Allison - thanks for the response and the context on how we got to today’s situation. That will be helpful while we wait for a more detailed response from ONHIC.

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It seems quite clear that we already have the answer from the Ontario body. To quote Alison’s reply:

‘There seems to be a misconception that ONHIC just “didn’t care” when it was their turn to develop an obscuring list. That is absolutely not the case and they put as much thought into it as any other CDC and chose to REMAIN (remember that was also iNat’s previous decision) obscuring a large portion of “sensitive/rare” species.’

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Don’t forget the next sentence:

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I will be happy to be proven wrong, but I fear that will be nothing other than a justification / explanation for the outcome of their decision.

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Thank you for the excellent discussion here and great points brought up all around.
I understand that there is a desire for consistency between the iNaturalist Gateways. As iNaturalist grows to include more countries, I believe it would be extremely difficult for one (relatively small organization) to govern what is obscured. We can not expect iNat.org to have expertise on sensitive species throughout every country in the world, so it makes sense to allow the Gateways themselves to determine this as they have the local contacts, experts and committees to consult on such matters. In Canada we have put together a steering committee to help guide the iNaturalist.ca platform and have taken a step at reducing the number of species that are obscured. As Allison has pointed out, this has replaced the default obscuring all S1-S3 species, dramatically reducing how many species are obscured. As far as I can tell (although it’s been suggested otherwise in this thread), this was originally the default for iNat.org where all S1-S3 as well as IUCN listed species were obscured; although it’s not obvious since curators have since updated many of those obscuring rules. I have looked around on iNat.org and found some species that are still obscured based on S-ranks (Harris’ Checkerspot, American Bittern, Mink Frog, Smooth Blue Aster, …), which speaks to the piecemeal approach of changing obscuring that has been pointed out earlier on this thread. The intent with the approach iNat Canada has taken was to reduce the obscuring in one large batch while at the same time updating outdated statuses of species. By doing this we saw the obscuring for most provinces decrease overnight without site curators having to spend their valuable time and excellent expertise doing this subjectively on a species by species basis. As a new starting point, relying on the expertise of the entities who deal with sensitive species data at provincial scale, made sense. And, yes, there is room for improvement, which is why there’s a process laid out to contact Allison to request a change for a given species.
As for concerns regarding iNat giving the reins over to an external organization, this is definitely not the intent. The goal is that the iNat Canada Steering Committee can help cater iNat.ca to be most valuable to Canadians and our species - which is why NatureServe Canada has been a key partner. We meet regularly with iNat.org so there is an ongoing partnership to continue to improve the site for the community and for conservation.
Keep up the great thoughts as we all look to improve the platform and shared goals of conservation.
Thanks

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To be fair, the staff and employees at iNat have never taken on exclusive responsibility for managing species obscuring. They have always empowered their designated curator community to participate in the process. If you believe it is inappropriate for curators to have this role, that is fine, but suggesting the issue is rooted in not expecting the small number of iNat staff to manage this is a little misleading.

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Thanks for that clarification. Correct, I hadn’t meant to be misleading. The point I’m trying to make is that iNat.org isn’t in a position to have the final say in South America, for example, so yes, they have to rely on site curators. But iNat has to start somewhere, so can’t leave everything open until a curator obscures it. Therefore they do have to put obscuring rules in place from the get go which brings up this question of what needs to be hidden and what does the process have to be to achieve that. I think curators are extremely skilled an knowledgeable so yes, should have a role in this. But concerns have been raised, in this thread even, about curators unilaterally un-obscuring. So following a process of first contacting the CDC provides a level of oversight to ensure sensitive species remain safe. I’m curious to see how this process plays out and whether responses from the CDC, are that they’re ok with un-obscurring those requested species.

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Hi and thanks for your response.

When I started using iNat in 2011, the site was very small, most conservation status were not added, and i do not know if there even were conservation statuses in the system yet. Over time conservation statuses got added piecemeal, but i am not aware if there was ever a policy to obscure all special status species. if there was… it was not followed. We connected with our own Heritage hub in Vermont as iNat grwe (and in fact i was part of that process from both ends as I worked for that Heritage hub then). A list of species was proposed that was conservative in that it obscured anything that might be of collection risk, but still left many special status species that did not have global status (since very few here do) as open geoprivacy since there’s no conceivable reason to obscure a lot of these things… sedges that only experts can tell apart, edge of range prairie species that are rare here but cover millions of acres elsewhere and are in the active landscape trade, etc. I know they are reviewing the obscuring process but hopefully they will stay with the same approach (I do not work for them any more so i am not involved this time). In this case too i do worry a decision will be made to obscure all the special status species, but in any event it matters less because we don’t have that many globally common trees and such that are special status here.

I think one can justify obscuring truly global rare species in a lot more settings even if there is no collection risk, but the real issue (or one of them) with Ontario is it is on the edge of range of a bunch of species that are common to the south. However, understanding the range of these species is especially important to those of us to the south because of, among other things, climate change is causing these species to move. To understand how to manage these species we need to understand their northern range, and for some reason, this entity decided to hide a big chunk of the edge of range data, where it overlaps with the Ontario provincial boundary. I keep asking here what benefit there is to obscuring red spruce for instance, which is the dominant tree in many forests in Vermont and clearly not of collection risk, but no one has given me an answer. This is having detrimental effects on our ability to understand the range and ecology of this species, and there’s no conceivable upside to hiding this data. It’s not good for Canadians, the global community, or for red spruce. I’d argue it’s a determent to all of the above. Remember too that users can choose to obscure for any reason, and any time they think a specific site has a specific risk or otherwise don’t want to share location data, they are still free to obscure. This only addresses the auto obscure.

I am all for having local portals help choose what is obscured as long as they actually follow the process - auto obscure things that have collection, poaching, or harassment risk. If the organizations aren’t going to actually sort through and select the species that have that risk to be obscured, i don’t really see an upside to letting them obscure too many - or too few - species without following that process. If they are unable to spend the time sorting through the species, it is not politically advantageous for them to do so (they are wary of being ‘blamed’ if they aren’t cautious enough) or some other related issue, I am sure we can find some other way to go about it that doesn’t involve letting iNat curators unilaterally choosing which are obscured (which i agree is problematic.) Clearly there will be grey areas and I think obscuring the grey area species may make sense - better safe than sorry. Hiding spruce and oak data from people because the range of these globally common species arbitrarily crosses a geopolitical boundary… just doesn’t help anyone, and actively hampers community conservation efforts. We need to look at conservation on a level that makes sense to species and ecosystems - such as ecoregions. Red spruce doesn’t care about the Canadian border or the border between Ontario and Quebec.

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