Flag for Taxon: Oakland mariposa lily (Calochortus umbellatus)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| kueda | Oakland mariposa lily (Calochortus umbellatus) |
its conservation status should not obscure coordinates |
Jun. 2, 2019 05:53:55 +0000 | kueda |
Local resource managers in favor of leaving it obscured (see comments on flag) |
Comments
I don't feel terribly strongly about this particular taxon, but how often are we going to intervene? I do balk at a future where a local abundance and/or collection pressure rubric is applied broadly. Drawing the line there for other species would implicate plenty of 1Bs. In essence it creates [yet another] rarity system: 'rare/threatened enough to be obscured' and 'not so,' and it wouldn't track with anyone's understanding of existing ranks.
As someone who works on behalf of four separate agencies that have this species on their land, I can say that it's a near-universal practice to privatize rare plant data regardless of case-by-case prudency. And, the potential for impacts (real or imagined) on the species or the habitat where it resides is sometimes enough to turn off land managers from trusting iNat, using it, or allowing subordinate staff to use it. The antidote is being able to say that "rare species are auto-obscured, full stop" which isn't true after such chippings away as this.
it's near universal practice to hide and obscure information about rare species. it's what we've done for decades. You know what else has continued or even accelerated in that time? Habitat loss. Extinction. Lack of community interest. You name it. Deciding what to obscure is hard, but if we continue down our current path we won't have anything left to monitor and hide data on. Unfortunately, the current approach to conservation doesn't work. At best it slows the rate of loss a little, maybe.
There is some limited data on poaching. We know it occurs and that sometimes people use the Internet to try to find species. But we don't really know if that actually increases the success rate of poachers. We do know that conservation efforts without community support and knowledge and enthusiasm almost invariably fail. We know that poachers and other criminals thrive on secrecy and lack of community awareness. And, we know that when you hide data from local communities and citizens and landowners, we lose support, knowledge, and enthusiasm.
So do we continue the slow downward spiral of extinction and loss? Or do we invest trust and faith in our communities by sharing as much data as we can? Choose wisely.
(fwiw i've worked for several agencies as well and still do... as well as consultants, etc)
David, you're right, I am trying to unobscure more things piecemeal, and seriously considering a more systematic effort. While I've definitely heard the kinds of concerns from resource managers you describe, we on staff also field a decent number of complaints from resource managers who complain about not being able to see that observations of threatened species are on the land they manage. We don't want to do anything that would harm threatened species, but we also want to provide data that will help people conserve threatened species (or even know that they exist). A lot of the time we simply can't do both, but in some situations I think we can, or at least do better than we're doing now, and to me that means revisiting why we are obscuring things in the first place, as we're doing here. Most threat/rarity classifications are not granular enough to answer the question of whether disclosing coordinates will harm the species, so I've been trying to loop in local experts like yourself. I admit it's ad hoc, but IMO it's superior to just assuming I know best and unobscuring things unilaterally. If we try to deal with this more systematically we'll need a better system.
Anyway, I'm hoping Michelle Hammond from EBRPD will chime in too. Assuming you're not flipping a table in frustration right now, can you think of any other local resource managers who might have opinions on this issue for this species?
Haha maybe my tone was off a bit there, I am not frustrated by this. But I do exist at an intersection between conservationist, professional rare plant data collector, amateur rare plant enthusiast, and iNat knower/advocate, and as spiritually similar as that all ought to be, I often get pulled in conflicting directions and need to communicate from one camp toward another. It's in this context that I appreciate a straightforward and holistic system.
I would draw @boschniakia, @sarahsnail, and @mrchasse into the conversation for this taxon in particular.
Sorry if my tone was off, too. I'll leave it at that here, Ken-Ichi has already been subjected to too many of my 'opinions'.
I agree with @dgreenberger -- rare species should be location obscured full stop. No confusion with what is obscured or not obscured. This lets other experts/systems/organizations decide what should be ranked rare. For example, Eryngium jepsonii was just uplisted to 1B.2 and Juglans hindsii is about to be downlisted. Let that decide what to obscure.
How does this obscuring work? Is it still a suggested species if you upload a rare species picture and it is "visually similar and seen nearby"?
Bulbs or lilies in particular are poached frequently although I have no personal evidence to back up that statement. I look for holes whenever I am looking at our rare populations. I have seen holes but they are likely to be gophers! I asked another botanist's opinion and they worry deeply about the poaching of lilies. I know of serious dudleya poaching happening along the coast of CA (you have probably seen the story). More thoughts soon. I am asking a fellow iNaturalist botanist friend and will get back to you with their opinion.
Thanks for commenting, Michele. If we abided by the rule that "rare species should be location obscured full stop" then we would obscure the coordinates of coast redwood (ubiquitous, commonly cultivated, very difficult to poach), Anthoceros fusiformis (a locally common hornwort, barely ever noticed by most people), and Echium pininana (globally endangered according to the IUCN, but an invasive pest in California). These are extreme cases but they illustrate why I don't think we should be absolute about obscuring because of the existence of a conservation status: most statuses only consider rarity, or maybe level of threat, not risk due to the disclosure of coordinates.
"How does this obscuring work?" Check out https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/25923684. You should see the location represented as a big green rectangle, and the true coordinates are somewhere inside of that rectangle. If you are a poacher, it's very difficult to figure out where the true coordinates are, but if you are a land manager it's very difficult / impossible to know if this observation represents an unknown locality for this threatened species on the land you manage.
The "seen nearby" part of the vision suggestions actually considers a much broader area than our obscuration area, so whether or not we obscure a species would not impact that very much.
I personally think the risk of poaching for this species is practically zero, but that isn't based on any evidence, just a hunch, which is why I wanted to hear from you and David, since you both help manage lands where the majority of this species' populations occur. If David is neutral but you feel strongly that localities should remain obscured, then that works for me.
Thank you for asking my opinion/opinion of local botanist. I really like interfacing with iNat and recently discovered Seek. I started posting in Huckleberry where I lead hikes regularly.
California has the CNPS plant rankings which are posted/updated on CalFlora. EBCNPS keeps their own list of locally rare -- I would say not rare enough to obscure the location. I forget how many rarity rankings there are internationally. Coast redwoods are not rare in CNPS listing. I think for lilies poaching risk is probably real but coast redwoods or other woody species are less likely to be dug out.
I am happy to weigh in on other species where it makes sense.
It's a bulb, but a locally very common one and not particularly showy. I've never heard of anyone poaching it. @dgreenberger and @mhammond, do you have any opinions on whether or not iNat should obscure the coordinates of this species? I'm proposing that we should not.