Conservation status, banners, and flags.

[Sam]

Hi all,

 

I am curious as to why certain endangered taxa have the bold red or brown banner indicating threatened/endangered status (see for example the Shortnose Sucker), but other taxa do not, e.g. species on the US Endangered Species List but not yet evaluated by the IUCN. For instance, I recently added ESA status to several Federally listed cutthroat trout (e.g. Lahontan Cutthroat), yet although the coordinates are now obscured, and the conservation notes appear at the page bottom, the conservation banner does not appear at top of the species page, nor do endangered flags appear on observations. I feel the banners and flags are important tools in raising awareness of threatened and endangered species, but if they are biased only to IUCN evaluated species then they don't adequately inform the public.

 

On a related note, can a database of Federal or State conservation statuses be imported? I haven't looked at a lot of species, but for the Federally-listed Shortnose Sucker mentioned above, only the IUCN listing appears at the bottom. It would be informative to add different listings automaticaly, if they exist, similar to the various state and federal listings for iNat's California Tiger Salamander page. It would be quite time consuming to manually enter them, however.  Similarly, I just noted that although the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout has a NatureServe entry, its associated conservation codes are not reflected in iNat.  

 

I'm aware that a species' conservation status can differ between lists, (e.g. IUCN vs USFWS, or between Federal and State listings), and maybe where statuses differ (and thus prospective banner color), priority could go to the most coservative status, or something to that effect,

 

Sorry if this is a lot of rambling, and maybe what I'm asking involves too much behind-the-scenes work, but I'd simply like to see threatened species more easily identifiable. (Although it's also quite possible I made a mistake when adding conservation statuses.)

 

Thanks.

 

Sam McNally

[Charlie Hohn]

Not sure if I can help with all of your questions but I do know that we had our Vermont threatened and endangered species designated in iNat so that they display the flag and auto-obscure.  Some of these species aren't as rare in other areas and won't obscure there.  Pretty neat!  

[Ken-ichi]

Hola,

> I am curious as to why certain endangered taxa have the bold red or brown
> banner indicating threatened/endangered status (see for example the
> Shortnose Sucker), but other taxa do not, e.g. species on the US Endangered

You need to set the "IUCN equivalent" status when adding a
conservation status. We use the Red List statuses as a kind of lingua
franca between different authorities. The banner at the top of the
taxon page will appear when a conservation status exists that has no
place (i.e. it is a global status) and it has an IUCN equivalent
status greater than LEAST CONCERN. I did that for your trout:
http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/117315-Oncorhynchus-clarkii-henshawi

> On a related note, can a database of Federal or State conservation statuses
> be imported? I haven't looked at a lot of species, but for the

Yeah, I can import statuses from
http://ecos.fws.gov/tess_public/SpeciesReport.do?listingType=L&mapstatus=1,
but technically these are all only statuses within the United States,
so they won't show the banner.

Our conservation status coverage is spotty because aside from the the
IUCN Red List, we've never really done a comprehensive import, mostly
because no one source is totally comprehensive. We've done some stuff
on request, like the Vermont statuses, and we have a tool that makes
it very easy for us to import NatureServe statuses for particular
taxonomic groups, so we use that from time to time, but I personally
hesitate to import ALL NatureServe statuses b/c some of them just seem
insane (e.g. they seem to think Double-crested Cormorants are
"Vulnerable" in California).

-ken-ichi

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[Charlie Hohn]

oddly, the cormorants come up as a special status species even in Vermont where they are considered pests, only marginally native to the area, and there is active management to reduce their population.  Some would call them 'invasive' in which case it would get both of those tags at once...hmm.

[Christopher Tracey]

For the record, California heritage staff set the NatureServe status of Double-crested Cormorants to Vulnerable.  NatureServe only sets the G-ranks, while the member programs determine the S-ranks (typically using NS methodology--hopefully!).  I'm having a hard time reconciling the data for this species on NatureServe explorer as the s-ranks

[Christopher Tracey]

Ack! Hit send by accident (iPhone!!!).  Continued below...

  I'm having a hard time reconciling the data for this species on NatureServe explorer as the s-ranks don't seem to jive with the range map. In my experience this is pretty typically for birds as a group, given a number of factors including range, management priorities form the jurisdictional agencies, etc. 

I've been meaning t ask this question for a while, but are all the NatureServe G-ranks loaded into iNat?

- Chris (Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program)

[Kent McFarland]

Charlie,

It is an S2B in Vermont. Which means fewer than 20 breeding occurrences in the state. It is only ranked for breeding in Vermont. This should not be confused with political ranks such as state endangered or threatened of course. 

In Vermont, rankings for birds is accomplished by a group of professional ornithologist from the state that comprise the advisory group for birds to the state endangered species committee. 

For more information on this and other species that breed in Vermont, see the Vermont Breeding Bird Atlas species pages at http://www.vtecostudies.org/vbba/species.html

Kent

____________________________

Kent McFarland
Vermont Center for Ecostudies
PO Box 420 | Norwich, Vermont 05055
802.649.1431 x2

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[Ken-ichi]

No, we do not have all NatureServe G ranks. We import from NatureServe piecemeal, for the reasons listed above.

[Charlie Hohn]

Makes sense.  And I am not voicing an opinion on the Cormorants either way, fwiw... I know it's another one of those tricky issues and you know how little I know about birds :)

[Kent McFarland]

Oh I know. I don't really get why it's 2. Calling some colleagues on the committee to find out! I just wanted to make sure folks knew we do go through a pretty detailed process here in Vermont.

Kent

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[Charlie Hohn]

Well, maybe even though there are a lot of them where they nest, it's still less than 30 locations total.  

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[Derek Shiels]

I would like to submit a list of Michigan state-listed taxa to update the conservation status of these species. I don't think these necessarily need to be automatically obscured. What is the best format for this? I would be interested in compiling these lists for other U.S. states too...would that be helpful? 

- Derek

[Ken-ichi]

For conservation statuses we prefer to work from published lists,
preferably machine-readable published lists. Can I assume you were
just going to send us the lists published at
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12141_12168---,00.html?
If so, would it suffice to simply add the NatureServe statuses for all
those taxa? Seems like they probably match up pretty well.

-ken-ichi

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