As New York readies its 10-year State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP), some wildlife advocates are pointing out a key omission: Wolves.

A group of 13 organizations that includes local, state and even international organizations sent a letter on Sept. 19, a day before the comment period ended for the most recent draft of the SWAP. Part of a consortium known as the Northeast Wolf Recovery Alliance, which formed in 2003 two years after a canid killed by a hunter near Coopertown was determined to be a wolf. 

The letter is the latest push to get the state to do more to protect wolves that may be in the Adirondacks or New York in recent years, and to align efforts with other Northeastern states – including Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine that have added wolves into their plans.  

Maine is the recent state to add protection for wolves. 

“Maine has done a 180 degree turnaround in their approach to wolves. I mean, for many years, they were adopting the same public stance that DEC formerly had, which was, wolves aren’t here. Wolves aren’t ever going to be here, end of story,” Christopher Amato, conservation director and counsel for Protect the Adirondacks. 

The wildlife advocates also point to the fact that New York has documented a gray wolf from the Great Lakes region being killed in the state. 

“We really hope that New York follows the lead of these other states, given that New York has the most recent wolf killed in its state,”  said Amaroq Weiss, the international nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.

SWAPs are 10-year plans that serve as the state’s guiding document for managing and conserving species and habitat. This one is for the years 2025 to 2035. They include a species of greatest conservation need (SGCN) list with associated habitat assessments, threats, and recommended actions. They are required by states seeking federal money through the state wildlife grant funding program, which was created in 2002. 

The groups says New York is putting itself at a regional disadvantage for leveraging federal wildlife funds to assess and protect wolves, which are known to disperse hundreds of miles. 

States can list animals in the SWAP that historically lived in their boundaries on the list even if they are no longer present. The 2005 SWAP included wolves but not this last one. The DEC isn’t proposing them in this version, saying in the draft plan that it is focusing “conservation resources on resident species that currently have a population in New York and are at risk of declining.” 

Amato also said fellow carnivores, cougars and Canada lynx should be on the list. This is something Protect has petitioned for throughout the process. 

“The truth of the matter is that the department really doesn’t know what the true status of either wolves or cougars or Canada lynx is in the state, because they have not been able to do the type of basic research that would be required to ascertain how many individual representatives of these species are here in the state,” he said.  

All three animals have not had a known breeding population in New York in recent decades. Cougars and wolves disappeared due to hunting and habitat loss more than a century ago, and it’s unclear if lynx ever had a self-sustaining population here, according to the DEC.

The only evidence of a cougar in New York state in recent years was found near Lake George in 2011. At that time, a dispersing male from South Dakota went through the state before being killed by a car in Connecticut.  

Lynx sightings have been reported in other Northeastern states in recent years, including in Addison County in Vermont, which borders New York.

The wolf advocates contend that 11 wolves are known to have been killed south of the St. Lawrence River since 1993. 

Amato said that even if DEC doesn’t have the staff and resources to study and actively work on lynx, cougars and wolves, it should list them anyway with the roughly 500 other species in the plan. 

“It sends a message to the public that we believe there is an opportunity for these species to reestablish themselves in the state and to basically return the ecological balance of the state’s natural resources to what they were,” Amato said.