Not in western North America, there aren’t.
I’m not saying there are absolutely no small feral cattle populations, but such cattle are usually rounded up with the ranched cattle sooner or later, and bad winter storms usually kill off cattle that aren’t being fed by ranchers as well as some that ranchers are trying hard to feed. So I would not mark free-range cattle wild in western North America.
This seems to be the only argument which can be made for the “wild” tag. However, with this, there is no way of differentiating those individuals and/or populations which go on to become invasive and established vs. those that don’t, and this seems to be presuming that all non-native/non-established-occurrences anywhere will are invasive species? As a result, all this does is obfuscate or obscure the map with a bunch of potentially irrelevant observations while making it more difficult to see where true biological invasions may be taking place.
Perhaps the default assumption should be “not wild” until/unless further evidence outside of iNat can be known or presented.
:-) Of course there is no way now to differentiate “those individuals and/or populations which go on to become invasive and established vs. those that don’t.” That’s why we should mark them “wild,” not banish them to the junk-heap that is “Casual.” Then we wait. It takes time for populations to become established, or for us to be sure they didn’t. That’s just real.
Do these dots mess up maps? Only if you assume iNaturalist maps show only established populations, which they don’t. They show occurances, interactions of human and organism, and the meaning of the occurance may need interpretation. If I were studying a species using iNaturalist data, I would examine peripheral and disjunct observations, asking myself (1) is the observation correctly identified? and (2) what is/are the date(s) of the observations?
A minor point of terminology. Not all introduced species are invasive. Some settle in to be small parts of ecosystems.
Some users such as myself might be more interested being able to exclude or at least better separate out observations from a biogeographical perspective. Or at the very least further differently layered maps/explore tabs. Other problems begin to arise when they still show up as a species on the explore tab and influence the overall species percentages observed, which in of itself is highly misleading.
The other issue is that by just marking them as 'wild", this gives no idea or metric into the question of how long they might have been there, or whether they are only (very recent) occurrences. If multiple people or users observed what would, or would be very likely to be the same animal over multiple years, then that might mean that it was able to overwinter, and would be stronger evidence for making it “wild” vs. a transient domestic animal.
Or evidence of offspring or reproduction for that matter. I’ve just never really understand the objections on here to going back and re-marking them as “wild” if/when there is new evidence instead. My expertise are herps, and other than Florida, Trachemys, and maybe a few hitchhiker species in southern states, there aren’t really very many other instances of “naturalized” herps in the U.S to the point where it would become too hard or too much work to be able to go back to do that.
You’re correct that one observation in itself doesn’t tell us anything about how low the species has been there. Again, that takes time. It takes repeated observations or lack of observations. So? If the organism is wild, free, at the time, mark it wild and wait to see what happens.
Remember that iNaturalist contributors are a very diverse crew. We can’t expect them to go back to see if the species is there another time, and we can’t expect that they would be able to find, for example, a herp even if it was still there. We should record what we can know – the organism was there then – and then let the situation develop.
Why would we need iNat for to tell determine what we already know of the species biogeographic patterns, history, etc.? Most of those gray areas have been happening for far longer than iNat has been around, barring any substantial climatic changes in the next 10,000 years. It comes down to local user knowledge and expertise in many cases, but I don’t think the default assumption ought to be “guilty until proven innocent”.
If you’re looking for a website that can show where each species has established populations and only that, then I’m sorry to say it but you have to keep looking.
I don’t see any of these examples as grey areas.
-livestock that are free-roaming and aren’t bound by fencing or pens
-cats or birds (pigeons, chickens, etc) that can go anywhere but come back to a garden or house at night
-honeybees in an orchard that come from managed hives
All these animals are being fed, housed and protected by humans who are responsible for them. Not wild.
-pathogenic diseases affecting livestock or pets
-algae/snails/worms/etc in a home aquarium that were not introduced to it on purpose
-a pathogenic fungus or virus affecting supermarket produce (not local)
-plant parasites or galls on plants being sold at a nursery or garden store
-pest insect in a bag of pre-washed frozen vegetables
-finding an animal in a vehicle/storage container/etc (e.g. driving to California from Pennsylvania and finding a living spotted lanternfly in your car)
Nobody is willingly rearing or cultivating these organisms, nobody is responsible for them; they’re simply taking advantage of man-made environments and food sources. Wild.
-garden plant spreading vegetatively beyond cultivation through runners or rhizomes (but importantly, not by seed)
Are the suckers being tended to? If yes, cultivated, if not, wild.
Then why the opposition to change? In loarie’s thread from a couple of years ago, this DQA discussion was also discussed at length, and sounds like something he still wants implement at some point, but most of what we heard was how it would be such a great loss to the site, etc. etc.
Unless the “Wild” DQA tag gets changed to “In Captivity/Not in Captivity” to better describe the specimen’s current state, perhaps trying to push for uniform DQA usage might be a futile endeavor as everyone interprets that differently as it is currently? Perhaps it also seems to me that some users are more interested in maintaining the status quo?
The status quo is and should be based on the definition which has already been laid out. It doesn’t really make sense to try to make it anything else unless that definition is eventually changed.
That’s why some of us are here-to advocate for change in these areas. Three days ago, you did the same thing by voicing your opposition to some site blocking features, so whatever is most important to you.
There will always be ambiguity so perhaps we shouldn’t concern ourselves with how other users might choose to use or interpret those features as long as they provide their reasoning/explanation? In any event, this thread is about discussing the many above ambiguities which remain to be adequately addressed and prioritized, not how the DQA should be used. This is like getting 1,001 doctors on WebMD to all uniformly agree on everything.
“livestock that are free-roaming and aren’t bound by fencing or pens”
“cats or birds (pigeons, chickens, etc) that can go anywhere but come back to a garden or house at night”
Both of these cases seem to be presuming that the organism is “captive/not wild” when there is still a current or legal owner somewhere out there. So why would it be any different for other commonly kept, domesticated taxa which accidentally escape for a short period of time? This happens much more commonly than one might think (i.e. the animal gets out or is lost during a move, it escapes from an outdoor enclosure or is left outside with insufficient supervision, etc.).
Nothing correct about naming free-roaming cattle as wild, it’s not, owners know where animals are and they belong to them!
Aren’t owned cattle usually tagged, like on the ears or something?
In North America, that depends. Most owned western cattle are branded or carry ear tags, except young ones.
Often, but not all, I’ve seen a lot of horses with no tags or claims on them, and yet people know who they belong to, plus people choose where to move them to and it’s often far from different groups of animals. Tags are useful for e.g. sheep where big groups are moved together from winter to summer grounds, often going between different countries.
I’d agree with @ owlshead-wren above in saying they are captive because that are still likely managed, fed and medicated by humans
I’d say captive/cultivated, because without intervention from humans, e.g., filling the aquarium, that habitat would quickly cease to exist.
Agree, but it would be a “casual” observation because almost certainly it’s origin could not be determined, so the “Location is accurate” would have to be “no”.
Overall, it is a sticky question though, because so much of our surrounding habitat is manipulated, where do you draw the line about human influence. I guess the way I try to view it is, if you removed all humans from the equation, would the organism continue to survive in that location. If yes, than I’d consider it wild but, if not, I’d consider it captive/cultivated.
That is not a criterium for wild or captive, if there’s no intent to raise the organism, it’s wild, spiders in your house would die if you opened the windows and left, but they’re not your pets unless you decide to call them so and feed them.
What about microchipped stray pets, or pets which can otherwise be proven to be under current ownership through having some sort of unique colors/markings which can be compared to a prior photograph of the specimen?
I’d say captive is correct because, without human intervention, that aquarium is not self-sustaining. If someone doesn’t fill the aquarium, that habitat would not exist, so the starfish would not be able to survive on it’s own as wild.