I would say no, we should divide fences made specifically for those animals to stay inside or just country boarders or fence around property. Intention plays a big role.
2 Likes
Fair enough. I also think we should make a distinction between those animals that are cared for by humans in some way, and those that are left to live their lives naturally (fence or not).
4 Likes
If that were the case than every animal that canât fly or swim around those barriers in Australia, not just those species is captive.
Taken to an even more extreme example, every animal in North or South America that canât fly or swim over or around the Panama Canal is captive due to movement limits imposed by a human made structure.
I understand you have good intentions, but Iâm not sure much of the scientific community would agree with your interpretation and doing so is impacting data that can be valuable.
9 Likes
Except the Panama Canal wasnât specifically designed to prevent the free movement of those species, whereas a fence for bison was.
Again, make this an attribute and the problem goes away. There could be âwildâ for herds like Yellowstone, âcaptiveâ for those in zoos, and âcannot be agreed uponâ for others. 
If the rules people propose using for fenced bison were applied to other species then there would also be âwildâ domestic cattle, horse, and sheep populations, too. I think what many people really want is more of an ownership/management qualification: private vs public. But that may not translate to other species or regions.
What I do know is that the definition of âwildâ is like âfreedomâ â something groups humans will likely never come to full and complete agreement on, and the way that iNaturalist treats non-wild observations exacerbates this issue.
4 Likes
As others have stated, the intention of the barriers plays a big role. The fence at Wind Cave was specifically made to keep bison in, which is different than the Panama Canal, which was made to bring ships through and not to keep any animal species restricted to a certain area.
1 Like
I also think we should make a distinction between those animals that are cared for by humans in some way, and those that are left to live their lives naturally (fence or not).
I like this idea, in part because it could also translate to naturalized plants â i.e., This plant isnât native but did grow and survive here without active human assistance (even if a human played an intentional or accidental role in the seed being there).
For megafauna it seems like it might be doable, but it does seem it might require a fairly specific knowledge of the animals, their management, and the area.
Why does intention matter? If the definition of captivity is that its movement is restricted by human construction, then all barriers are equally restrictive and have an equal impact. Why are only the bison in those areas defined as captive, why not every other species who canât get out?
You could also ask were the fences designed to keep the bison in, or were they constructed to keep the cattle out to avoid spread of disease.
11 Likes
No, the definition of captive is that species movement is intentionally restricted by humans.
There is no doubt that these fences were intended to keep bison in, thatâs literally what they were constructed for. They were not constructed to keep cattle out (cattle likely wouldnât even a problem anyways, nearly all cattle in the US are fenced).
1 Like
Something about this conversation is bothering me, and I finally sorted it out. @raymie you are essentially imposing your definition of what constitutes wild/captive on others without their consent. Yet it is clear from the conversation that your definition is not accepted by all. If you are determined to correct what you perceive as an error, then leave a note on each observation so that the observer can think about it and make the decision to categorize the observation accordingly.
12 Likes
Again, why does intent matter. Your definition is arbitrary to support your objective. A human built barrier that restricts movement of a species isnât suddenly not a barrier when it impacts a different species that canât get around it.
Where I live carp barriers are installed in multiple creeks etc, they are designed to âkeep the carp outâ. Sometimes some, especially really young ones get through it, then mature and canât get back out. Are they now captive ?
Are the bears in there captive ? Please donât tell me a bear can tear down a section of fence to escape, because an adult bison is equally capable of bulldozing a meter of fencing if it really wanted to.
The fences are there to prevent interactions between bison and grazing cattle from spreading disease to the cattle, and in some cases to define areas where hunting is legal or not.
14 Likes
Respectfully, raymie seems to be sticking to a pretty close interpretation of iNaturalistâs definition:
Checking captive / cultivated means that the observation is of an organism that exists in the time and place it was observed because humans intended it to be then and there. Likewise, wild / naturalized organisms exist in particular times and places because they intended to do so (or because of intention of another wild organism).
By iNaturalistâs own definition human intention is the differentiator in the wild vs non-wild debate. I have provided comments explaining why I am marking organisms as captive only to see organism observation pages (almost exclusively bison!) devolve into disagreements less constructive and more personal than this thread. I nearly ditched the site years ago for this very reason. I suspect many people havenât read the definition and regardless the definition doesnât sit well with peopleâs emotional response to their observation being downgraded to âCasualâ.
3 Likes
I read that definition as meaning the species has no choice or control as to where it is at that time. Bison roaming freely over hundreds of thousands of acres donât meet that criteria.
8 Likes
You are completely right. Thatâs how the DQA is supposed to work. The reason itâs a voting system is precisely because different people have different opinions on this, so the majority vote chooses whether an observation is wild or not. Go vote all these bison wild if want. I wonât agree with you, but if thatâs what you want to do, go for it. Thatâs precisely how iNat is designed.
2 Likes
People shouldnât have to go vote to offset yours when you are doing something that even staff have commented above is not really the intent of the site.
Itâs like me saying any observation where the pin was manually placed not done with GPS exif data Iâm going to vote location is inaccurate because you canât prove it is accurate, but by all means go and vote yes against all of mine if you want.
Or here is another one, I arbitrarily decide that âyes the id can still be improved Dqa item means any species which has accepted subspecies is not completely identified until it is at the ssp. levelâ Thus Iâm going to go vote yes on every RG Canada Goose or American Robin at the species level and set it back to needs ID until it gets a subspecies ID. Feel free to vote against mine if you disagree.
4 Likes
People shouldnât have to go vote to offset yours when you are doing something that even staff have commented above is not really the intent of the site.
If the staff are in complete agreement then they should change/clarify their definition and this would be a much less divisive issue. 
Hello? Any staff out there?
3 Likes
the observation is of an organism that exists in the time and place it was observed because humans intended it to be then and there
This is why I mentioned the fact of humans setting aside habitat for wildlife in an earlier comment.
Large megafauna such as wolves, lions, tigers, elephants, and rhinos continue to exist and exist in certain areas because we humans decided that they would live in those areas. Yes, many protected areas were established because of the wildlife that happened to already be there, but it is because we decided collectively that the wildlife has value that led to the protected area being established in the first place.
Take the history of Kruger National Park: it was first a hunting ground, then turned into a nature reserve. Only later at some point did fences get erected at the boundary of the national park. Are the wild animals of the Kruger suddenly no longer wild because we as humans decided to put up a barrier?
If we collectively decided that the area would be better suited for us to âdevelopâ as agricultural or urban land, there is very little that could stop us (and certainly not the wildlife). As such, large wildlife survives and exists at our pleasure. We intentionally let those species live and reproduce. When those species overstep our collectively imagined boundaries (such as large carnivores entering cities), they are usually translocated or shot. The exceptions to this (e.g. Mumbaiâs leopards) prove the rule - they exist in that area because the powers that be allow them to do so.
8 Likes
iNat also says itâs a grey area, and offers these examples of âwildâ:
- garden plant that is reproducing on its own and spreading outside of the intended gardening area
- a pigeon that benefits from human populations but is not actually raised by humans
Do the bison not benefit from human interference, but at the same time are free to do as they will?
And almost all NA wild herds are descendants of raised animals, since their preferred habitat has been destroyed.
5 Likes
Since I have relatively little interest in mammals, I will not be doing that. I am simply advancing a philosophical principle. Moths donât care about boundaries and fences.
1 Like
While they are not technically fenced, their movements are heavily restricted â âBison are not allowed to move freely outside Yellowstoneâ. In reality, there are bison âtolerance zonesâ to the north and west of the park, but animals outside these zones are either killed, captured, or escorted back inside (ref). So if we use the definition of animals that have their movement restricted intentionally by humans, the Yellowstone herd isnât wild either.
10 Likes
Of the populations that raymie lists as wild, at least two are on islands (and were put there by humans). If we were discussing a human-made moat instead of a fence, would the bison still be captive? What about with an island? On the islands, theyâre constrained for human purposes in the same way as a fence, itâs just that humans didnât build the barrier. And as noted above, even the unfenced, non-island Yellowstone population is still managed to keep them in a human-defined area.
iNaturalistâs current definition of wild/captive is too broad to be useful, in my opinionâyou could argue that a bird is at a feeder because a human intended it to be then and there, but thatâs specifically listed as wild in the given examples. I think the examples are great for covering a lot of common use cases and reducing the gray area. Honestly, with the exact wording of the iNat definition and without the examples, I could read it broadly and argue that the island bison qualify as captiveâthey exist on the islands because humans intend them to be there.
One of the iNat staff weighed in above and suggested considering what purpose marking them all captive serves. From iNatâs definition of wild/captive:
âThe main reason we try to mark things like this is because iNat is primarily about observing wild organisms, not animals in zoos, garden plants, specimens in drawers, etc., and our scientific data partners are often not interested in (or downright alarmed by) observations of captive or cultivated organisms.â
So, would a scientific data partner be alarmed by/not interested in the observations of bison in Wind Cave, as they would, say, an observation of a cactus in someoneâs house in Maine? My guess is probably not. The Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and other landowners consider them part of the biota of their property; anyone studying bison would be aware of the fencing, and could make decisions about the data accordingly; and many people looking at the community and ecosystem levels would probably prefer to know that bison are present, especially given their status as keystone species in the landscape. As others have noted, the fact that casual grading so thoroughly removes an observation from output seems extreme in this case. In context of scientific research, Iâd argue that itâs more harmful to remove the data than it is to leave it in and let researchers decide whether or not to count bison as wild, depending on their research needs.
12 Likes