Obscuring of Fraxinus

[Daniel Atha]

Several Ash species were recently classified by IUCN as Endangered, Critically Endangered or Near Threatened.  Their Conservation Status was updated in iNaturalist accordingly and the geoprivacy is set to obscured (except for Fraxinus americana, which for some reason was left as open).

I help manage the New York City EcoFlora project at NYBG which is engaging citizen scientists to help document the flora and ecology of the City.  We want to protect sensitive species and we support the concept of obscuring to protect the species from too much attention including and especially poaching.

However, Ash trees are not threatened by too much attention or poaching and broad knowledge of their locations is critical to their conservation.

Therefore, for those species that occur in New York City (Fraxinus americana, Fraxinus pennsylvanica, Fraxinus quadrangulata, Fraxinus nigra, Fraxinus profunda), I have added a conservation status and set the geoprivacy to <open> and the location to <New York, NY, US>

Fraxinus americana: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/54805/edit

Fraxinus nigra: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/54807/edit

Fraxinus pennsylvanica: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/54808/edit

Fraxinus profunda: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/54809/edit

Fraxinus quadrangulata: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/54810/edit

My hope was that this would leave the species obscured everywhere except New York City, where the species would be open.

Several tests by me and colleagues (logged in and not logged in), indicate that the species are still obscured in New York City (e.g. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8466859)

Is global obscuring AND regional exceptions possible?  Or is the only possible choice global obscuring OR regional exceptions?  Or maybe I incorrectly edited the Conservation Status of the above taxa.

Thank you for your feedback.

Daniel  

[Charlie Hohn]

I have no idea why these were ever obscured. We have unobscured white and black ash because there is zero poaching risk and it's crucial for conservation planning and ecological research to be able to see the locations, like you said. I did not notice that green ash was obscured, we should unobscure that as well. 

[Daniel Atha]

Charlie,

By what process did you unobscure White and Black Ash?  Fraxinus quadrangulata and Fraxinus profunda should also be unobscured for the same reasons.

Daniel

[Charlie Hohn]

I don't want to get into details now, nor to unobscure species I am not familiar with... You can email me if you want... naturalist.charlie at gmail... but i shoudn't be unilaterally unobscuring things. What I did with the ash is based on decisions and discussions with iNat admin that happened a while ago.

[krancmm]

One needs to read WHY something is on the list - it's not just poaching, habitat loss, etc.

The Fraxinus are on the threatened/endangered list because of Emerald Ash Borer, a recently introduced invasive pest:  "EAB infests and feeds on all North American ash species it has so far encountered. The nature of the infestation (larval feeding in the phloem) effectively girdles trees as small as 2.5 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) (many years before reproductive maturity), leading to death within five years of infestation. EAB therefore causes virtually 100% mortality."

Logically, threatened species because of introduced pests/diseases should never be obscured on iNat.  If anything, one would want to know exactly where every Fraxinus was to monitor for the pest, to discover if any can survive EAB, to be ready to take action if an effective insecticide is found.

Monica Krancevic