The CCH Admin Committee invites you to participate in a dialogue about how we as the community will approach the protection (if any) of locality and coordinate data for sensitive taxa (e.g., rare and threatened taxa) in the CCH2 specimen data portal.
Currently no data are globally redacted from the public search features in CCH2 or CCH1. Individual collections can and do redact individual records.
The question has come up as to whether certain rare plant data should be hidden from public view. If we are to do that and to what extent are open questions for debate among participants.
The plan is to gather written statements now and then have a zoom meeting to discuss the findings and vote on a way forward.
We will invite any and all stakeholders to submit a written statement ahead of the meeting that will be shared with the group. In your written statement you can address what you see as pros and cons to restricting access to a few/some/all rare species data portal-wide (meaning that all specimens of that species will be hidden from those without rare species reader status). In your statement, please also consider that rare plant data from CCH2 are shared with CCH1, the Jepson eFlora, Calflora, Calscape, WildflowerSearch.org, iDigBio, GBIF, and individual researchers, and how might that be dealt with?
Please submit your written statement by March 12th
Please feel free to share the link to this form with anyone who produces or uses herbarium data. We would like to hear from as many stakeholders as possible.
Once the statements have been collected, we will compile them and post them on our website ahead of a zoom meeting in which we will discuss the topic. We are also gathering data on best practices being developed by other collections and the broader natural history community, nationally and globally. We will share those resources once we have them compiled.
More information and the submission form can also be found here:
https://www.capturingcaliforniasflowers.org/sensitive-taxa.htmlThank you for your thoughts and we look forward to hearing from you.
