Hello to the current members of the Rare Plants of North Carolina Project!
I'm letting you know about some changes that are being made to the project. This project was initially created by staff of the NC Plant Conservation Program (PCP) and now includes managers from the NC Natural Heritage Program (NHP).
The focus of the project continues to be to document the variety and distribution of rare plants in North Carolina. Added observations are now restricted to state boundaries and will soon be restricted to species included on the NC rare plant list https://www.ncnhp.org/publications/nhp-publications/rare-plant-list. This list is dynamic and includes species that are listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act, species State listed under the Plant Protection and Conservation Acts, and informally listed species that have been determined to need monitoring.
The NHP conducts and maintains an inventory of known locations of rare plants, rare animals, and natural communities in the state as part of its mission to support conservation of natural areas. For more information about the NC Natural Heritage Program, see https://ncnhp.org
The PCP develops regulations, voluntary programs, and cooperative partnerships to help protect imperiled species and their habitats. PCP's responsibilities include the listing of North Carolina's Endangered, Threatened, and Special Concern plant species and the development of conservation programs designed to permanently protect these species. For more information about the NC Plant Conservation Program, see https://www.ncagr.gov/plantindustry/plant/plantconserve/index.htm
By continuing your membership in this Project and adding observations, you are allowing the Rare Plants of North Carolina Project managers and institutions to evaluate your observation for inclusion in the NHP conservation database. An important part of this evaluation is the location of the observation.
Observations of plants in iNaturalist have coordinates obscured by default based on their state rank (S1, S2, and S3). By adding your observations to this project, you can be assured that the locations of your observations are available to Project managers but not to the larger iNaturalist community. Users may choose to restrict access to individual observations for personal reasons; observations that you have set to obscured or private will not be visible to the Project managers. For more information on geoprivacy see https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/help#geoprivacy
