+1
I fear a third choice would essentially add to the confusion and chaos – many people would keep debating whether a creature should be voted unknown or wild according to their own taste; and whether that thing is captive for sure or only possibly, and yaddi yadda yadda.
My take on your Douglas fir example is that acute knowledge and lengthy argumentation about the local context certainly is a first step, but even that can be disregarded out of hand, for whatever reason (aesthetic, scientific, personal grudge) or no reason at all, with neither ‘obligatory’ explanation to provide nor punishment to fear (…unlike messing with IDs in bad faith).
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And this is complicated by the fact that some timber management strategies use “seed trees” – when the stand is clearcut, a few individual trees are left standing with the intention that their windblown seeds will replant the next stand.
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The suggestion that a user is deliberately marking feral cats as captive made me wonder if the motive is protecting the animals from people who are trying to control the feral cat population. If the iNat data is used in a way to target the individual animals, I could see that being a motivation to counter that by hiding which animals are feral and which are pets.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’d hate if someone mistook my pet cat for a feral animal, although I understand that there are times when the feral populations can impact local wildlife and balance should maybe be restored. That might take the form of a catch, neuter, release strategy which is what I believe is happening in my area, but I think there are people or maybe even organized efforts who also shoot stray cats in the name of ecological restoration.
On the other hand, there are also areas in the world where cats have fully naturalized for centuries and have been a part of the local ecosystem for as long as anyone remembers.
Some observers and iNat users have hestitated to post an observation out of fear of the consequences to the target animals, if it’s in some way controversial for those animals to be where they are.
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