Flag for Taxon: orchids (Family Orchidaceae)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| deboas | orchids (Family Orchidaceae) |
conservation status for Queensland has been bulk added, including to species from all over the world |
Mar. 6, 2023 00:16:03 +0000 | peggydnew |
Removed status at family level |
Comments
copying in @meta4 @gregtasney @craig-r who have been working to resolve this previously
Yes, over the last year or more I've been adding (mostly for Qld) the actual status for Qld where they were set as Endangered at the genus level and obscured in response to flags by @meta4 . The genus level Endangered status obviously trickled down to the species level as expected but many of the orchids were not endangered so I changed the status, at the species level, to either Confidential or SL (special least concern and set the IUCN equivalent as least concern) when Qld published their SL list or in response to meta4. For the vast majority of those taxa I left the locations obscured (actually, probably all of them). I don't have a problem with their locations being obscured. But we're now in the position where Epidendrum ibaguense is obscured and locations "confidential" in Qld when it's a horrible weed. https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/322425-Epidendrum-ibaguense
@craig-r ... you beat me to it with the silly situation of exotic escapee species being shown as V for Vulnerable and obscured.
I recently picked it up with some Dendrobium nobile plants - a commonly cultivated species.
I'm curious that this has only been done for Queensland and hasn't been applied to the rest of Australia, and hope it never is.
The majority of orchid species in Qld aren't of interest to collectors or are so common that location data isn't important.
Until this happened on iNat recently it was only a select few species that were obscured despite not being listed as rare or threatened.
Is there any possibility of ever getting back to that situation?
What looks like a separate case of bulk conservation status being added to orchids, this time for Cypripedium in Sweden, in 2021: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/608930
Can someone please provide the URL of an observation that you think was inappropriately obscured? That would help us see if there's actually a bug here. As to whether it was appropriate to add a species- or genus-level status here, I defer to @peggydnew.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/134939900
non-native orchid species in Australia, an increasingly common bushland weed, being obscured
@thebeachcomber, that's behaving as intended, as far as I can tell, so again, I defer to Peggy. FWIW, one remedy would be to add a status for that species in Australia with the geoprivacy set to open, though I don't suggest doing that before getting some feedback from Peggy.
@kueda .. here are two examples of exotic species
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/135069449
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/63470695
But these are only a minor issue.
The main issue is obscuring the whole family for just the state of Queensland (nearly 500 spp) because some are likely targets for plant theft.
Particularly when most of the species of concern are already obscured because of their conservation status.
The issue is a result of the non-scientific idea that all orchids have glamorous flowers and are targets for collectors.
The family is one of the most numerous in the plant kingdom, containing almost 30000 species, most of which are of no interest to plant growers.
Here are just a few examples of the many species that have fallen into this without any justification:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/138568735
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/148665979
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/141341817
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/141729369
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/145244548
For information, at suggestion of Ken-ichi, I have added a feature request: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/improve-or-remove-process-for-adding-cascading-conservation-status/39858
Hi all, I'm in the process of removing the statuses added to the higher level taxon via the Qld confidential list. Spot checking (https://www.data.qld.gov.au/dataset/queensland-confidential-species) it appears that species that need obfuscation are in the list, and there seems to be a higher level entry in the list when a species occurs underneath it, making that entry problematic in iNaturalist. There were 105 entries like this, and I'm manually removing them about a dozen each (Australian) day to go easy on iNaturalist's index. Orchidaceae will come up in the next few days.
Thanks for letting us know here @peggydnew and good luck with the updating!
Thanks @peggydnew
Cross-referencing https://inaturalist.org/flags/606223 for historical purposes because many comments there are relevant to this flag also
Many thanks for cross-referencing!
It appears that a recent bulk import of conservation status for Orchidaceae has added conservation status and obscuration for Queensland, Australia, to all species in this very large family, regardless of where they are found in the world. I've checked the last ten orchid species I've observed, which are all Neotropical or Palearctic species, and all have a conservation status, of "Confidential" (obscured), "Added by @peggydnew on February 09, 2023"
See this flag: https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/608864
I wonder whether iNaturalist staff can undo the bulk import of status for family Orchidaceae, as this is clearly not the right way to do this. It should be based on a list of the Orchidaceae that actually occur naturally in Queensland. @tiwane @loarie @kueda