Taxon Page - Authority for Conservation Status

[mwk...@ameritech.net]

Is there a simple way to add a conservation authority for conservation status (endangered, special concern, etc.)? Only those already listed in the dropdown will save when editing a taxon.  There are many state authorities (e.g., Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources) that designate E/T species at the state level, but are not in the dropdown.

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Mark,

We can add more authorities, but would prefer to only add them if
someone commits to actually doing the tedious work of creating all the
conservation statuses relevant to that authority. If you want to adopt
a conservation authority contact me off group and I can help add it to
the drop down.

I had hoped that by including NatureServe state (S) rankings we could
cover most of these state specific T&E species but seems like most
states haven't totally bought into the NatureServe S ranking and have
their own deal?

Best,

Scott

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--
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Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
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[bouteloua]

Would be nice to be able to add authorities for conservation statuses...not many people would be willing or able to do an entire authority one by one and I also don't see much harm in doing them piecemeal.

cassi

[Patrick Alexander]

For what it's worth, the rankings given by NatureServe and associated state-level Natural Heritage organizations are intended to tell us how rare or common something is, while designations as endangered or threatened by the United States Fish & Wildlife Service, endangered or threatened by state DNR or Fish & Game departments, sensitive by the BLM or other federal land management agencies, etc., tell us what category of legal protection, if any, something has. There's a relationship between those two different projects, of course, but whether a species is rare and whether it is legally protected under a particular law or policy are inherently different things. Even if one has total faith in the NatureServe rankings, legal status and rarity aren't going to be interchangeable.

In the context of iNaturalist, I'm not sure how much the above matt