Perhaps since it seems to divide factions within the community, and the issue exists around the world, one solution could be to either create a project or simply an observation field for “Fenced or unfenced”? I know that wouldn’t necessarily accomplish @raymie’s original intent of unwilding observations, but it could help create searchable categories within species like American Bison. I would be much more interested and engaged, and less thrown and defensive off if someone came in an tagged my observation as “fenced” rather than downgrading it to captive/cultivated.
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I don’t understand the point of asking these questions–or maybe particularly you yourself, as a staffer, asking them. iNaturalist provides the definitions and the tools, and people are trying to follow/use them. raymie has interpreted your provided definition to mean that these animals in these contexts are not wild and is using the tooling as intended to mark them as such. The answer to “why?” is essentially that you’ve asked them (and all of us) to do it.
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So you are including animals in ecospheres as wild? Interesting.
You’ve made your point about what you believe is captive, as have I. I’m not going to engage in a debate about the minutiae of it or if algae in a snowglobe are captive or not.
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To those of you saying that the bison should be considered wild because of their effect on the local ecosystem - many cultivated plants have major effects on the surrounding ecosystem, yet they are considered captive. A good example of this is how Tropical Milkweed planted in the southern United States is causing many Monarchs to not migrate, as it offers a host plant when there historically wasn’t any. The nectar of Tropical Milkweed also sustains many pollinators. Yet any planted Tropical Milkweed in the US (and that’s all of them, I don’t think the species is escaped anywhere) is cultivated. I’m not trying to argue that these Tropical Milkweed plants shouldn’t be considered captive, only that by this same logic the bison are.
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There’s a difference in how iNat phrases cultivated term, if there’s no fence animal do can wander around, yes, they will be hunted down or scared back, but it’s the same as any wildlife that runs accidentally from a forest to a town, if there’s a fence there’s no ability for them to move there at all. In the end it’s all about how website takes such cases, if stuff says it’s wild or captive, it’s what will stick around.
Here’s the thing:
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A domestic cat that was bought from breeders and raised in a human home is the definition of captive - or so common sense says. Yet in our example the cat has the free run of the neighborhood; it is able to go where it pleases, and may even ‘camp’ at several different households across the week. It is spayed, gets taken to the vet when sick, has shelter from the weather and temperature, and gets fed by the family. Depending on region, the most the domestic cat may encounter are birds, rodents, and the odd domestic dog.
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A leopard, deep in the heart of Kruger National Park, has fought for its survival from the day it was born. It has to hunt to survive, has had to deal with the multitude of other creatures it may encounter, from impala and porcupines which it learns is food, to rhinos and elephants which it may have learnt the hard way are too dangerous to hunt, to lions and hyenas which it must earn quickly are dangerous competitors that are more than capable of killing it. It has had to carve a territory for itself and roams within it as it pleases, reinforcing its own boundaries and testing the boundaries of its rivals. The leopard has only its own immune system to rely on when sick, and must find whatever natural shelter is available if there is bad weather, or else tough it out. Born to a long lineage of wild leopards that have lived in the area for millennia, our leopard is a true product of the landscape and neither it nor its ancestors have been relocated or placed somewhere by humans. It has never seen a fence in its life, does not have its movement constrained except by the territories of other leopards, and the only signs of human presence are the roads and occasional vehicles.
Guess which one, according to the position of some above, is ‘wild’ and which is ‘captive’.
The absurdity of this definition is clear. Much of the confusion could be mitigated with an adjustment of iNat’s definition of ‘wild’ and ‘captive’. As we have seen, the definition - whether humans intended for a certain creature to be at a certain time and place - is at first glance a good definition, but it breaks down when we consider the more nuanced situation of some species and regions.
Again, how big of an area do we have to define for the creatures inhabiting it to be ‘captive’? All wild creatures on land have their movement constrained in some way by humans: national and town roads are well-known for acting as boundaries that carve habitat up into smaller islands, with many species unable and/or unwilling to cross. Wildlife are prevented from crossing borders in many countries (as the controversy around the USA-Mexico border illustrates). Technically-uncontrained wildlife such as Yellowstone bison are chased back into the region earmarked for them (a clear case of humans intending them to be in a certain place at a certain time). And because humans did not intend for them to be there, wolves and mountain lions that try to expand out of their range are most often shot; which leaves the question of whether these animals’ core populations are ‘captive’ because humans intended them to be in that area only.
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Is there a qualitative difference between seeing an elk at Northwest Trek, and seeing an elk in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest? If so, what makes the difference?
I have no idea, as I have been to neither of those places. Is the one fenced and the other unfenced?
You raised the issue of migration. I agree that migration has been a large part of many species’s ecologies; however, for many species, we find that within the same species, some populations are migratory while others are more sedentary. Both equally wild.
In this definition, Yellowstone bison cannot be wild because they are either herded back or shot by humans when they leave the area set aside for them; the same goes for the bison introduced to islands - yet in neither of these cases are fences involved.
You kinda missed your point as first example is clearly captive on iNat definition.
But the definition, according to some in this thread, is that the cat has freedom of movement and not constrained by human barriers. Hence the cat is wild while the bison and leopard, living in larged fenced areas so vast that it makes the fence essentially irrelevant for most of the animals, and never been raised by humans, are ‘captive’.
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No, it doesn’t have a freedom if it depends on humans for “food and shelter”, surely not with vet appointments. All non-homeless cats are captive on iNat.
No, it doesn’t have a freedom if it depends on humans for “food and shelter”
Hence why I made the point above a few comments back about birds that become dependent on human resources for survival (bird feeders), despite it technically have the freedom of movement (flight).
In the light of this discussion, we need to ask whether the eastern bluebird or the purple martin is wild or captive, as they have become dependent on artificial nestboxes for their continued survival in eastern North America.
See, this is the issue we’re encountering here. The bison and leopard are not dependent on humans for food or shelter, but the domestic cat and localised ‘wild’ birds are, despite their compared freedom of movement.
We need to rework the definition used by iNaturalist in my opinion.
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Just feeding off humans is not enough, as they’re still not pets, they can live perfectly, just in different place, so it’s the sae providing of sources as seeding clover for bumblebees. Cats while they’re in pet state are chained by one house (or a couple), at the moment it decides to be free and starts living alone a km away from old human house it’s wild.
many cultivated plants have major effects on the surrounding ecosystem, yet they are considered captive
Your analogy doesn’t quite work, as these plants are propagated, fertilised and watered by humans, and in many cases sheltered as well. The bison and other wildlife you consider “captive” are left alone to the mercy of the environment and the elements, breed on their own and have all the characteristics of being wild with only their movement (for the most part) passively restricted into certain areas.
In iNat’s definition, the offspring of cultivated organisms can be marked as wild as they technically reproduced outside of human control (despite being in an landscape controlled by humans). Likewise, the offspring of animals in national parks (landscapes that are intended to have limited human impacts) should be considered wild, as they reproduce and complete their natural cycle outside of intended human control.
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The staff at iNat do not provide hard an fast ‘Rules and Definitions’. They are suggestions, and it is left up to the observer to determine how to interpret them. Clearly, in this instance, there is a difference in how perceive that suggestion. Just as in all life. I believe the issue has boiled down to use a unilateral judgement on the observations of others.
It is left up to the observer and other users; that’s what raymie is doing. Asking about the point of a user using the tooling that the site itself provides seems strange to me.
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It should take 2 votes that something is not wild to move it. The default assumption on observations is that they are, just like the default is the date; location etc are accurate.
No user is going to proactively set all their records especially in a use case clearly not in predominant use on the site to wild.
They are taking advantage of the ability to unilaterally move records in an interpretation not supported by the majority of users on the site, nor the site itself. And that observers are not notified of.
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Marking all of these clearly takes a lot of time and effort - finite resources for all of us. So I was wondering if that time and effort was in this case being used to follow the “letter” of the law just because @raymie felt the need to do so because it’s there, or if there was a greater benefit that came from marking observations from these populations as not wild. Clearly @raymie thinks there is a greater benefit.
However, I would disagree as they’re removing hundreds of observations from both regular iNat and GBIF based on what I think is a simplistic rubric for defining wild and not wild on iNat. How much does the fence affect the animal’s day to day existence? Is it constant running into the fence as it goes about feeding and socializing? I think there has to be room for nuance and for taking into account the intention of the rule, not just following its letter. It’s stated here:
The 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.
Herds in enormous places, even if there is a fence of some kind far away, clearly don’t belong in the same league as zoo animals, pets, garden plants, and the like. And as has been noted by others, the provenance of these populations is probably not a secret to anyone using these data for research.
The definition does not mention restriction by humans at all, as @cmcheatle noted. It’s about whether or not the organism intended be at the specific place and at the specific time the observer encountered it. Not about whether its movement is restricted by humans in some way. Obviously you could slice that up into finer and finer pieces (eg “well, my cat intended to be on the couch when I photographed her there”) which is why one must take into account the intent of the rule when interpreting it.
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Point of emphasis: I didn’t say effect, I said functioning. There’s a difference. Bison are integral to North American grassland functions. Part of restoring a wild grassland ecosystem is restoring the flora and fauna, especially keystone and other critical species.
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I don’t want to get into this again, but @raymie is also using his definition of wild to change the status of other’s observations even though this discussion shows that not everyone agrees with that definition. To me this is the crux of the issue.
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