Should NYS be breeding pheasants for hunters? Critics say $750G program is flawed

The feathered remains of pheasants were strewn along a stretch of Sunrise Highway about a half mile from the edge of Otis Pike Preserve in Manorville earlier this month. Every 15 or 20 feet a disembodied wing, leg, striped tail feathers, coppery chest feathers and tufts of iridescent teal were scattered across the grass. Farther along, one pheasant was beginning to decompose on the frozen soil. 

It was early January, just a few days after the two-month pheasant hunting season in Suffolk County had ended, but by then nearly all the pheasants that briefly roamed the woods in and near the preserve were probably dead. Some were shot by hunters but the majority killed by cars, eaten by hawks or other predators, or starved.

Since 1909, New York State has bred and reared ring-necked pheasants to provide sport for hunters. Every fall, roughly 30,000 birds are packed into boxes at the Reynolds Game Farm near Ithaca, which is owned and operated by the Department of Environmental Conservation, and released on state-owned lands. About 1,950 pheasants were released this year in the Otis Pike Preserve and another 1,950 in the Rocky Point Pine Barrens State Forest, where the pheasant hunting season lasts from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31.

The DEC also provides approximately 30,000 day-old chicks to clubs, 4-H groups and individual growers who raise the birds for release “on lands open for public hunting,” according to the DEC website.

But pheasants are not native to North America: They were imported from East Asia in the 19th century as game birds, and although they flourished for a time in grasslands and farmland hedgerows — landscapes similar to their native habitat — those landscapes largely have disappeared. Since the 1970s, New York’s “wild, self-sustaining populations have diminished in excess of 90 percent,” according to an emailed statement from the DEC. Any pheasant glimpsed on Long Island was almost certainly reared in a pen.

Captive-reared pheasants are ill-equipped to survive in the wild. “They’re used to being fed by humans and then they’re dumped in an unknown environment,” said John Di Leonardo, president of Humane Long Island, a nonprofit advocacy group, as he surveyed the bodies along Sunrise Highway. “They had no parents to teach them how to avoid predation,” because their parents were released and died the previous year. “They don’t have a fear of humans; they don’t have skills to forage.”

The birds raised on the Reynolds farm therefore make easy targets; the DEC suggests pheasant hunts are well suited to “novice hunters.”

“Pursuing pheasants serves as the introduction to hunting for many people and provides an opportunity for new hunters to learn safe and ethical practices from experienced mentors,” the DEC wrote in an emailed statement. The state reserves two days in October as a special pheasant hunting season for children age 12 to 15, who must be accompanied by a licensed adult. 

Low survival rates

But the DEC acknowledges that only about 44% of the pheasants that are released throughout the state are “bagged” by hunters, and that very few of those remaining will make it until spring.

According to Pheasants Forever, a national organization founded by hunters to conserve pheasant habitat, roughly 25% of captive-raised birds will survive a month after release. Only about 5% survive the winter.

The DEC isn't aiming for higher survival rates. “The goal of New York State's pheasant propagation program is not to restore wild pheasant populations, but to provide upland game bird hunting opportunity,” a DEC spokesperson wrote in an email.

Assemb. Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) has introduced a bill that would prohibit the state from propagating pheasants, a program that costs the state $750,000 a year but “serves no conservational purpose whatsoever,” as the memo in support of the bill notes. 

“That the state would be engaged in the business of bringing animals to life to be shot and killed — I don’t think it’s the appropriate role for the agency that’s charged with protecting wildlife and the environment,” said Rosenthal, who has filed the legislation before. “It’s state-sponsored cruelty.” 

At a time of environmental crisis, Rosenthal said, the funds spent on the pheasant program should be spent on genuine conservation projects.

In March, the entire breeder flock at the Reynolds farm — about 6,600 pheasants — had to be “depopulated” because of an outbreak of H5N1 avian flu, and the farm then bought new birds. The extra expense was partly offset by the pause in operations after the first group was killed, and was split between the DEC's Conservation Fund and federal Wildlife Restoration Act funding, according to a DEC spokesperson.   

Asked about Rosenthal’s criticisms, the DEC said in a statement the pheasant hunt “gets young people and other novice hunters outdoors learning firsthand about our natural resources” and that research suggests “participation in hunting is correlated with pro-environmental behaviors like local open space protection and participation in conservation organizations.”

The DEC’s surveys show about 23,000 hunters across the state pursue pheasants each year, fewer than the 65,000 who hunt turkeys and 35,000 who hunt ducks and geese. Efforts to reach hunters and hunting clubs for comment were not successful.

Rescue efforts

In late November, Di Leonardo and his wife, Juliana Di Leonardo, who is the vice president of Humane Long Island, walked the same stretch of Sunrise Highway as they did in early January. This time they counted 30 dead pheasants. They saw several dozen live ones huddled together at the edge of the woods.

That day and in the following weeks they and another volunteer gathered up eight hapless pheasants and brought them to the Evelyn Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays.

They were thin when they arrived, according to Adrienne Gillespie, the center's hospital supervisor, and they had internal parasites, but they have healed and put on weight and have been exploring their outdoor aviary, which is outfitted with discarded Christmas trees for protective cover.

Among the tens of thousands of birds released by the DEC and its chick-rearing partners, these eight — so tame they were easily caught by human rescuers — soon will be headed to SkyWatch Bird Rescue, a sanctuary in North Carolina. “I'd say they are pretty lucky,” Gillespie said.