What counts as Threatened?

I’m trying to find species of conservation concern in my state. Using annotations, I can search for threatened=true, which “includes taxa that have a conservation status with an IUCN equivalent of NT (Near Threatened) or worse specified.” (https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/search+urls#taxon-status)

But the search results are very strange. I think this shows any species that is NT or worse anywhere in its range, not just in my state/country? I’m not 100% sure because I don’t know how state and country-level rankings equate to IUCN.

Does anyone know how this works, and where is the table that equates local conservation statuses like NatureServe to IUCN?

See a previous thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/clarification-wanted-what-list-does-inat-use-for-threatened-status-in-observation-searches/13077

I’m not sure it answers your question. TLDR: nobody on the forum seems to know how this works, and the status designations are not updated regularly, so are often wrong.

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Thank you, it looks like @carmensm was also as mystified as I am about how this works.

I thought I saw some posts since 2020 that they were going to do bulk updates of Conservation Status, at least from IUCN?

I understand the alternative is flagging taxa. But I don’t know what statuses count as threatened, so even if that is correct on the Species page, I can’t tell if some are showing up erroneously under Threatened…

In other words, I’m not questioning what shows up on the taxon page under Conservation Status - I understand that is a whole other process.

I’m questioning what shows up on the Explore page with a Threatened search. It doesn’t look like that search is directly referencing the Conservation Status(es). Is “Threatened” a separate data field that is supposed to match the Conservation Status based on some look up table?

IUCN considers species only on a global or continental scale, while NatureServe considers species globally (global ranks, or g-ranks) and locally (state ranks, or s-ranks). So G1 is similar to CR, a G2 similar to EN, etc. In North America, many plant* species don’t have an assigned IUCN ranking, but most have a global NatureServe ranking (even if they are secure/G5), and species will also have state ranks (at least in states where the species is considered to be rare, threatened, or endangered- S3, S2, or S1). A species can be globally secure (G5)/least concern (LC) but locally rare (S3), and therefore have a “worse” state rank. So oftentimes a species state rank is what dictates what shows up in iNat Threatened results.

*I’m referencing plants here because I’m a botanist; IUCN has more ranks for other taxa like fungi, animals, etc.

However, the opposite can sometimes happen too. For example, Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is still reasonably widespread and common in the eastern United States. However, invasive insects (including the hemlock wooly adelgid) are decimating populations across its range and the species is rapidly declining. Because of this, IUCN has therefore given it a global rank of NT (near threatened), and NatureServe has a global status of G4 (apparently secure)- these are reasonably equivalent. However, many states haven’t yet updated their statuses because they still have a lot of healthy hemlock (in Pennsylvania it is still S5/secure). Therefore the IUCN status is “worse” and that’s what gets used for the iNat Threatened list- hence why it is the most common plant species that shows up when filtering for Threatened.

As far as I know, any status other than G5/S5/LC can result in a species showing up under Threatened. This also includes “sensitive” taxa that have been given that status due to threat of overharvesting. For example, wild yam (Dioscorea villosa) is common/widespread species (LC/least concern and G4G5/apparently secure) but has been given a status of At Risk by United Plant Savers because of “concerns of overcollection for medicinal use.” That status is enough to override every other local/global status suggesting that it is common or secure.

I’m not sure if that helps clear up any confusion. Perhaps if you mentioned which species you suspect are showing up erroneously under Threatened we could figure out what’s going on?

(doing my best to bite my tongue about the lack of oversight or standardization when it comes to conservation ranks on iNat, which seems to result in errors and confusion- but that’s an argument for another day).

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Thank you. So any status other than G5/ Least Concern counts as Threatened? Anywhere in its range?

For example, I’m looking at Arizona: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=40&subview=table&threatened&view=species

One taxa I found questionable was Common Side-Blotched Lizard. It is Least Concern (LC) Globally (IUCN). It is secure (S5) in Arizona (NatureServe), but Amenazada in Mexico and critically imperiled (S1) in Oklahoma. (NatureServe).

Hm. No, I didn’t think so (unless the “worse” status was for the whole range)…but your example doesn’t seem to be playing by what I thought were the rules, so either I’m completely wrong or something’s not working properly (or some combination of that). Whatever is going on, saguaro seems to have the same issue.

Examples of other Least Concern species are mostly behaving as expected, but white fir (Abies concolor) observations from NM are showing up in the Threatened filter but it should only show up as Threatened in Mexico and Wyoming. For some reason it’s behaving correctly in California (not showing up as Threatened) though.

I’m wondering if there’s some sort of mapping error going on (or perhaps obscured observations are messing with the filtering?) I haven’t seen many examples yet, but they all have conservation ranks in Mexico, don’t have ranks in bordering US states, but are still showing up in the Threatened filter in some of those states.

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OK that makes sense. Mapping errors could explain a lot of the questionable taxa on this list.

And your explanation that any status other than G5 counts as threatened is very helpful. For example, NM Privet (Forestiera pubescens) is “apparently secure (G4)” (NatureServe) but shows up on this list.

It is little bit strange that searching for Threatened actually returns a category (NT) that is not, technically, one of the IUCN statuses (VU/EN/CR) that count as Threatened, but it is consistent with including G4.

In that case, I think the explanation is at the subspecies level: U. stansburiana ssp. elegans is listed as Vulnerable (S3) in Arizona. I think that if any lower taxa in a geographic area are “Threatened” then iNat will translate that up to a species-level query.

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Thank you, that’s a very helpful idea. I think between the geographic uncertainty that @ciafre suggested, and your suggested upward translation of subspecies Threatened status, that could explain almost all of the strange taxa I’m seeing.

For example, Kingcup cactus is included on the Arizona list of Threatened species, but is Least Concern (LC) Globally (IUCN) and “apparently secure (S4S5)” in Arizona (NatureServe). But a subspecies (Mojave Kingcup Cactus) is S1 in Utah, so with geographic uncertainty maybe that’s why it shows as Threatened in Arizona?

But I’m still uncertain as to which NatureServe ranks count as Threatened. Maybe Kingcup cactus also counts as Threatened in Arizona because its S4?

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