An Approach to Conserve At-Risk Fish and Wildlife Species
A wildlife action plan serves as a state's guiding document for managing and conserving species and habitats before they become too rare or costly to restore. Congress created the State Wildlife Grant funding program in 2002 to provide funding for the management of fish and wildlife diversity. To be eligible for funding, the states and territories must develop a State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP). These plans must identify a Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) list, with the rest of the plan focused on identifying the habitats SGCN require, the threats that must be addressed to ensure the conservation of SGCN within the state, and recommended actions to address those threats. The New York Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy was completed in 2005 and revised into the New York State Wildlife Action Plan in 2015. These wildlife plans are updated every 10 years, and the 2025 update to New York’s SWAP is currently underway.
The New York SWAP assesses the health of the state's wildlife and habitats, identifies the problems they face and outlines the actions that are needed to conserve them over the long term. To initiate the 2025 update, DEC staff and conservation partners are reviewing the species status assessments from the 2015 SWAP, focusing on revising information on conservation status, population trends, and threats to these species. This information will be used to revise the SGCN list. SGCN are species native to New York State that are currently experiencing threats likely to jeopardize the future of their population in New York if action is not taken within the next 10 years. The 2015 SWAP, SGCN list, and technical details on species and habitats are available on this page.
