If they do this, it will mean that NASA will no longer be required to sterilize many of the landers and rovers that they send to Mars, especially in the equatorial regions. It will also mean that private space missions don't need to sterilize their missions to these areas of Mars, just document what they do. They can send life there too, for instance, it will mean that Elon Musk can send his "Mars Oasis" to Mars, for a photo op of Earth plants growing in a greenhouse with the Martian desert backdrop. I don't know if he still wants to do this, but this was his original idea before he developed SpaceX. If this plan goes ahead he will not be required to use a sterile growing medium to prevent forward contamination of Mars.

If we continue with current planetary protection policies for Mars, Elon Musk can still send his "Mars Oasis" to the Moon, where it would also be striking against the lunar backdrop. China has already germinated the first cotton plant on the Moon though it had no heating to keep it alive during the luanr night. He can send it to Mars too so long as the growing medium is completely sterile of Earth microbes (as is possible with sterile hydroponics). But perhaps we need to hold off from sending life that can proliferate there until we know more and have had a chance to study any native life.

This is what the new report says:

Major Recommendation: NASA should reconsider how much of the Martian surface and sub surface could be Category II versus IV by revisiting assumptions and performing new analysis of transport, survival and amplification in order to reassess the risk of survival and propagation of terrestrial biota on Mars. ...

Major Recommendation: NASA should consider establishing ( i) high priority astrobiology zones , i.e., regions considered to be of high scientific priority for identifying extinct or extant life, and (ii) human exploration zones, i.e., regions where the larger amounts of biological contamination inevitably associated with human exploration missions, as compared to robotic scientific missions, will be acceptable.

There would seem to be a case here for a second more thorough review of this, just as NASA and ESA called for the 2015 review of the 2014 report that this report relies on. Also, the “Planetary Protection Independent Review Board” is headed by a planetary geologist and it would seem to be more appropriate for an astrobiologist to head any review team.

The compilers of this new NASA report seem to have just made a mistake, as they show no awareness in the report that the 2015 review exists. If they did know about it, then it would be inconceivable not to cite it and discuss the issues it raised with the use of maps.

As for private space, Elon Musk for instance thinks that if we find martian life, it is important not to extinguish it. However he thinks the reality is that it is likely it only exists deep below the surface, in habitats that would not be impacted significantly by what humans do on the surface (see 30 minutes into this video). As we will see there are many ideas proposed by astrobiologists for ways that martian life could potentially thrive in near surface conditions on Mars. These potential habitats may exist almost anywhere on Mars. The risk here is again of a mistake due to a space entrepreneur making an executive decision bsed on his own self confidence in his assessment of the situation on Mars.

It is easy to make a mistake here, because

Could NASA accidentally extinguish native martian life by using a map like this?

Life in cold dry deserts can't be seen from orbit. The

If there is life on Mars, it's likely to be sparse and slow growing, like the life in our coldest driest deserts. Depending how much life is there, it may have almost no effect on the atmosphere, but it might have some effects we can notice. Curiosity has recently discovered variations in oxygen. Some process on Mars is creating more oxygen than expected in spring to summer, and less in mid winter, and the only correleation they have found is that less oxygen is produced when there is more dust in the atmosphere. They didn't find a correlation with seasonal and interannual pressure vartiation, or temperature variation. Could it be photosynthetic life? We also have the intriguing methane plumes also confirmed by ESA's trace gas orbiter.