The updated New York State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) has been released, and there have been some significant changes. The plan, which provides a guideline for conservation and management of the state's Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN), includes plants for the first time and leaves out carnivores. Brianna Kimmel from the Adirondack Explorer recently covered the changes. She spoke with WAMC's Molly Anderson about what it means.
Read the full transcript below:
Molly Anderson: To get us started here - can you give me the synopsis of this reporting?
Brianna Kimmel: Yeah, so the State Wildlife Action Plan is something that all states have to do every 10 years. It's congressionally mandated that every state has to update their SWAP in order to receive federal funding, so they have to create these plans about the wildlife that could be endangered, imperiled, vulnerable in their state, and then conservation plans. A then that kind of guides the next 10 years of conservation, what funding they need, how they're going to use that funding. So, I spent a lot of time reading the New York SWAP and all the appendices and everything that was published with it. And this story was kind of just a rundown of what is in this year's SWAP, what's different about it, what is not in this year's SWAP.
Anderson: What's interesting about this is that there are plants that are included in this list, and carnivores are not on the list. So, what was the idea behind including plants on the list this year?
Kimmel: So I spoke with Richard Ring, who is the chief botanist for the New York Natural Heritage Project, they work very closely with the DEC. So, plants are not currently eligible for state and tribal wildlife grant funding. However, there is an act that it's been introduced in Congress and was not passed, and so it's called the Recovering America's Wildlife Act, and that does include funding for plants. You know, the funding that is received - it's not a significant amount, and it is split between all the states. So, for these plants to get this potential funding and to have a conservation plan, it seemed like the first step to call for that was to include them in the SWAP.
Anderson: And this is really interesting because you say that already to begin with there's not a lot of funding, and it's split amongst the states. So you have you a long list of species that are on the list, and then you have species that, crucially, are omitted, specifically carnivores in this case. And I understand that some are making a case for why they should be on the list. Can you talk about what people are saying?
Kimmel: Yeah, it's really interesting. And since this story has been published, I've been reading through the comments, and there's been a lot of, you know, “it makes sense to focus on the animals that are actually in the state,” which I totally get. That does make sense. However, carnivores, meaning panthers, lynx, cougars, sort of like these big cats, they have not been found in the state since the early 20th century. So I think something really important to point out, and I spoke with John Davis about this — he's with the Adirondack Council — and I also spoke with Renee Seacor from Mighty Earth, and something that they really emphasized was that these carnivores, they're sometimes called keystone species because they're essentially this highest trophic level. You know, they're not being preyed upon, but they do a lot to control the population of their prey, what they are preying on. So, a lot of these animals typically are preying upon deer, and the white-tailed deer population in the Northeast is insanely high because it's not being controlled. They don't have these natural predators, and we're kind of missing an aspect of ecosystem balance when we don't have these keystone species.
Anderson: You know, you have conservationists that are sort of defending the inclusion of plants and defending the inclusion of certain insects, and then you have people like John Davis, who are very adamant about including carnivores, and so they're all making good cases. Is it the case that it comes down to there just being a gap in what can be on the list because there just simply isn't enough funding to sort of cover everything? That's a question that I had when I got to the end of this: Why not include plants and insects and carnivores? Why can't we just do it all?
Kimmel: Yeah, I think it definitely does come down to funding at the end of it all. You know, everyone I spoke to — they all really expressed appreciation for this SWAP. John Davis said this specifically, and it's been sticking out in my mind, while I was writing this piece, he said, "The omission of carnivores is a glaring omission." I would say that it does come down to funding. New York is a very big state and it's a very diverse state, you know, ecologically. So if you look at the list of species, you will see sharks, you will see whales, you'll see species that I didn't even know existed in New York. So it is a lot of ground and water to cover with not a whole lot of funding relatively, and not the biggest team of people to be working on it. Whether species were included or omitted, it really is important to think about state conservation from a holistic perspective and considering the plants, the animals, the ecosystems, the habitats. I think conservation is a very intricate issue, and so we really need to offer it the nuance it needs and deserves.
