The perils of publishing location data

[Cowboy_Ken]

The perils of publishing location data for endangered species
Date: May 25, 2017
Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science

While the increasing accessibility of data from scientific studies creates many benefits -- and represents a process that should be broadly embraced -- in the context of conserving endangered species it can actually be problematic, write David Lindenmayer and Ben Scheele in a recent Essay.

The authors highlight how increasingly, as in other fields experiencing so-called "dual use" dilemmas, researchers who publish on rare species with the goal of aiding conservation inadvertently end up fueling illegal actions -- like poaching -- that threaten biodiversity.

To avoid unknowingly contributing to further species declines, the authors say, biologists must quickly "unlearn" parts of their more than 400-year-old publishing culture -- for example, by reevaluating the benefits of publishing rare and endangered species' location data.

Lindenmayer et al. acknowledge that restricting information in this way is not without its costs; but, they say, these costs must be weighed against the increasing harm that can result from information being openly available. The authors discuss how such tradeoffs are being evaluated in other fields of science, where dual use is also a concern.

Fields such as paleontology and archeology have long maintained restrictions on the publication of site locations, for example, and promoted government regulations to limit collection and trade in fossils and artifacts.

Lindenmayer and Scheele briefly outline novel publication strategies that will allow for better protection of endangered species -- including, for example, buffering spatial data to provide only very broad location coordinates.

Story Source:
Materials provided by American Association for the Advancement of Science. https://www.aaas.org
Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:
1 David Lindenmayer, Ben Scheele. Do not publish. Science, 2017; 356 (6340): 800 DOI: 10.1126/science.aan1362
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[Link]

I made a very similar comment in a Environmental Conference discussion. I swear I heard researchers necks break trying to refute the issue. They just couldn't see how tagging and tracking the animals could lead to issues like poachers and such..

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

There is much nonsense associated with this. The concept has been visited many times before at many seminars,conferences, and symposiums, and as editorials in different journals.

What they don't talk about are the porters, rangers, field guides who have a moonlighting job exploiting what they learn directly from field scientists. That most journals recognize this situation and do not demand precise GPS coordinates for location of the animals. That may be put with the animal if collected for a type, but not in a published account.

It also completely ignores that 'pet' collectors have shown scientists where they found the animal that showed up in some market, as the scientists did not find it first.

This is a problem solved at least a few decades ago.

Also keep in mind that not all to long ago in the history of exploration scientists funded their explorations by selling specimens. This is at least as recent as the 1960's.