Nevada Rare Species Tracking List - NDNH

Hello Naturalists! I'm a botanist at the Nevada Division of Natural Heritage, and I'm here to share some updates that are relevant to this project.

What's New

The Nevada Division of Natural Heritage recently completed a large update to our At-Risk Animal & Plant Tracking List, which involved three major changes that will soon be reflected in the species list for this project:

1) We consolidated the "track" and "watch" lists into one list, which we will be calling the "track" list. Previously, the track list indicated that we would actively seek out data to map the distribution and evaluate the status of each species on the list, while the watch list meant that we were aware of a species' rarity but were waiting for more information before committing to mapping it. With expanded people power, especially for plants and invertebrates, we felt that many watch list species merited tracking.

2) We significantly expanded the new track list. The 2024 version of the track list contained 658 taxa, while the new list has 1135 taxa. Most of the newly tracked taxa are plants, but there are significantly more listed invertebrates, reptiles, birds, and mammals as well. We are refining our written criteria for the inclusion of species on the list. These criteria are based on NatureServe subnational ("S") and global ("G") ranks. S-ranks are determined at the state level by NDNH biologists and only consider a taxon's status within Nevada, while G-ranks are determined by NatureServe and consider a taxon's status globally or throughout its documented range.

3) We reviewed and, where necessary, updated the taxonomy for each taxon on the new list. NDNH biologists relied on their expertise, the current scientific literature, consultations with subject matter experts, and the Flora of North America to make these updates. Although we did not rely on iNaturalist to decide what classifications we recognize, in many cases the taxonomy you will see in our published list and our databases is now closer to iNat's taxonomy.

What It Means

The track list is not a list of every rare species in Nevada. There are many taxa that are uncommon in our state but are widely distributed, very common elsewhere and only in Nevada at the edge of their range, or restricted to habitats which don't face much disturbance and as a result are not listed--I still encourage you to seek them out and document them!

The track list is a record of species we consider rare and/or at-risk enough to map in our databases. By observing these species, you are assisting us in our mission to preserve Nevada's biodiversity and contributing to informed land use planning and scientific research.

If you have questions about a particular taxon that is listed (or not listed), you may reach out to the NDNH biologist responsible for it.

For those who are wondering about what this list means for conservation, NDNH does not have a formal regulatory role, and our list does not impose any protections. Our most important function is to maintain the best data for the locations and status of each taxon we judge to be imperiled in Nevada. Our data are widely consulted by a variety of stakeholders across the state.

What You Can Do

Although we do our best to rank species with the information available to us, there simply aren't enough hours in the day to get on-the-ground information on species threats and status for every taxon occurring in Nevada, and as such many of our ranks are preliminary. If you have information that could assist us in determining how imperiled a species may be in Nevada, please share it with us. iNaturalist observations are very useful for understanding species distributions and learning about newly documented populations, but contain limited information. To provide additional information about habitats and threats, you can use our Survey123 form.

In the coming days, I will update the species list for this project to match our new track list. This project will continue to function as before, but with an updated list of species that you can hunt for!

Shoutouts

Before we transition to the new list, I wanted to recognize some of the top iNaturalist contributors under the current list, which has been up and running with semi-annual changes since 2017. In that time, this project has racked up over 15,000 observations contributed by over 2,000 users. In a state as vast and wild as Nevada, that is a truly massive amount of new and useful information!

Thanks in particular to users @coreyjlange, @lonnyholmes, @ck2az, @sheriff_woody_pct, and @escalanteslim, who contributed the most observations--about 1 in 3 of the total for the project came from these 5 users!

For species diversity, the top 5 were @coreyjlange, @sheriff_woody_pct, @mreala, @lonnyholmes, and @lithostrotionella, who each observed over 40 different rare species! I excluded current and former NDNH staff from this top 5, as we are often on the clock when we make these observations.

Very special thanks go to @jdmore and @jdjohnson. Jim and Janel are both former NDNH botanists who have been highly engaged with the Nevada iNaturalist community for years, and who got this project off the ground. They continue to serve as project admins, active iNat community members, and truly invaluable sources of knowledge about Nevada plants.

We can't wait to see the exciting places everyone goes and to learn more about Nevada's biodiversity along with all of you.

-Patrick less ↑