MDBirding,
As many of you may know, I am an ex-Marylander, still have family in
Annapolis, and live now in Massachusetts. I feel quite nostalgic for my
home state, especially when I see how much Maryland has embraced eBird and
what a vibrant, curious, and interesting community of birders Maryland has,
as evidenced by discussions like this and others on MDBirding. The topic in
this case is an unfortunate one, but it is not one that is unique to
Maryland.
I think Bill, Matt and others have provided some great comments and
guidance for this issue in general. I'd like to specifically address where
eBird is on this. You can consider this the "eBird corporate" stance, if
you will, as Bill is fond of saying :-).
First, the issue of sensitive species is one that has been on our radar
screen for a long time at the Cornell Lab as we have tried to grow eBird.
There has always been tension between the two ideas that have been
mentioned: on the one hand, we want the birds that we love to be safe and
do not want actions by birders or photographers to negatively impact the
birds as they seek them out and enjoy them in the field; on the other hand,
we also firmly believe that the scientific value, usefulness as a tool for
birdwatchers, and, importantly, the conservation value of the bird
information in eBird is most helpful when birds are reported at the finest
(most specific) scale possible. Reporting a Scarlet Tanager sighting from
"Maryland" is not worthless, but not very informative. Reporting it as
"Anne Arundel County", is slightly better, and from the town of "Annapolis"
better still. Reporting it from the hotspot that represents the 80-acre
property on the South River starts to get even more specific and truly
valuable for understanding the relationship of the bird to the habitat it
was using, and this is what we hope most eBirders are doing. Obviously one
could report at even finer scales, maybe from the 20 acre woodland near
Forest Drive that is the actual habitat where 2-3 Scarlet Tanager
territories still persist; I could even do a stationary count at the exact
spot where I saw or heard the tanager. Our official eBird recommendations
are "the finer scale the better" and if I divided my one-mile morning
birdwalks on this property into 50 sections of 100 ft each, that would be a
fantastic dataset. But no one has the time to do that, so our general rule
is try to keep your traveling counts to five miles or less, try to report
from the most accurate location possible and try to use established
hotspots when possible. If you are willing to establish a route of point
counts or short transects and survey those regularly, eBird welcomes that,
but many of us are busy. Those that submit from "Blackwater NWR" or
"Assateague National Seashore" are still providing very valuable data, even
if the traveling counts are apt to be long and those hotspots represent
large areas.
So with that stance that we want fine-scale reports, how then can we
balance the very real problems with sensitive species?
I should say at the outset, that the Maryland eBird reviewers, and Bill in
particular, have regularly been very helpful to those of us at "eBird
Central" to defining policies on sensitive species. Recognizing that such
cases are rare, we also have to acknowledge that serious ethical (or legal)
breaches *do* occur. A short list of the sensitive species problems that
eBird users have been involved with include: failure to follow established
protocol for access to birding sites; trespassing on private personal
property; trespassing on federal property; visitation of highly restricted
scientific research stations involved in the study and protection of
Endangered species; disturbance of rare/sensitive species; and even, at
least once, targeted hunting (successfully) rare ducks reported via eBird.
Of course, the recent Long-eared Owl issue may be connected to eBird as
well.
Although these examples are all rare, they are also very concerning. While
eBird is not really directly responsible for the unethical or illegal
actions of a very small minority of inconsiderate
birders/photographers/hunters, eBird does have great responsibility as the
gatekeepers to an unprecedented database (now 120 million records and
growing) on bird occurrence and distribution. We work hard to make the
information free and available, but we need to do this responsibly.
We are at a point now where the old methods -- entrusting birders to report
responsibly and understand the nuances of site specificity and the myriad
output tools in eBird -- simply is no longer tenable. We are proud of the
enthusiasm around eBird Rarity Alerts and eBird Needs Alerts, but we also
see the danger with instantly feeding out "needed" birds in ways that can't
be controlled. Bachman's Warblers are presumed extinct, but if a Bachman's
Warbler is found in the Great Dismal Swamp in April 2013 and reported with
site specific directions on eBird, those details will literally be
available to the entire community of eBird users--even those without
accounts--within an hour. While this is also true of a listserv posting, I
think we can all agree that if a single pair of Bachman's Warblers remains
in the world, the best thing for that species' survival may *not* be to
have birders know about it. Even if 99.9% of us are respectful, I can
pretty much guarantee that some birders will sneak in, disobey rules, play
tape to the pair, try to find the nest, and stalk both male and female
relentlessly for photos. While I understand that impulse, I worry about
eBird's role in adding to the pressure for rare and sensitive species
simply through providing 21st century era information exchange. While we
inherently believe that information exchange is good in almost all cases,
all of us should think first before putting any bird information out on the
internet (eBird or listservs), just in case it is one of those rare cases
where it may cause more harm than good.
To that end, eBird is committed to revising the tools available to hide or
obscure reports. This will almost certainly involve better tools for a
user, that allow one to hide a specific observation from eBird output
(currently one can only hide an entire checklist) or to hide or obscure a
specific personal location. For mapped output, we also expect to implement
a structure whereby some species of high concern will be automatically
"blurred". Once this is implemented, we will recommend that the Maryland
editor team "blur" Long-eared Owls. This would mean that anyone can report
Long-eared Owl from Maryland when they find one, but it will not be
possible to find the specific information via eBird output tools. We may
even need a way to obscure the reporter of such birds, so that that
individual is not hounded by others saying "I know you had a Long-eared
Owl, tell me where. Tell Me Where! TELL ME WHERE!!!!"
We hope and expect this "blurring" will be used only in very very few
cases, but when species are truly sensitive and their very safety may be at
risk from birder attention, we simply have to modify eBird to protect them.
This is especially critical in the United Kingdom. Last time I visited I
was taken to see raptor species in one of the last locations for the
species in the country. To make sure that I didn't put the bird at risk (by
reporting to eBird), I was told stories about egg collectors who learned of
another location, snuck in past wardens assigned to protect the birds,
found the nest, and stole the entire clutch. Thankfully this type of
behavior is rare to nonexistent in the U.S., but I have heard of goshawk
and Peregrine nests being raided by falconers, so American birds are indeed
at risk from similar activity.
I am posting not to address this specific situation, but simply to plant a
flag that eBird will deal with this issue comprehensively in the near
future (for us that means within the year, or so), and that in the meantime
we would like to stress again that birders that use eBird (by the way,
thank you for reporting to eBird!) think carefully about where and when you
may need to modify your reporting for the bird's benefit. I know Bill and
others have posted it here before, but our story on the topic does address
the important cases and how to approach them:
http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about/reporting-sensitive-species
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and thanks for your support of
eBird. I'll post a more lighthearted followup.
Best,
Marshall Iliff
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Marshall J. Iliff
miliff AT aol.com
West Roxbury, MA
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eBird/AKN Project Leader
www.ebird.org
www.avianknowledge.net
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Ithaca, NY
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