by Tom Ellis – October 2025 Newsletter

ALBANY: Retired DEC endangered species biologist Al Hicks spoke at the April 30, 2025 Save the Pine Bush dinner at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Albany. His topic was Musings of a Wildlife Biologist.

Al said he knew the Pine Bush was a special place the first time he saw it driving from Canandaigua to Albany in 1977 for a DEC job interview. He was hired and worked with insects and birds, and, after a promotion, with mammals. He asked: “What does the future look like for wildlife in New York?” and answered, “It’s all about people.”

“People have a huge impact on every living thing,” he said. People have lived in North America at least 25,000 years, the ice retreated 10,000 years ago, and European expansion began about 400 years back. As European numbers increased, forest cover decreased and animal populations too. Sixty-six percent of New York is forested today, he said.

“Surviving species manage to survive around us despite us” and live in ecological, behavioral, and economic cracks. He gave examples of each.

New York has three species of rabbits, he said: Snowshoe hare, Easter cottontail, and New England cottontail. Rabbit behavior is well suited for them to survive around us.

New York has nine species of bats. They have survived because they hang out in trees, only fly at night, and avoid people.

Mountain lions became extinct in New York. People saw them as undesirable because they eat farm animals. White-tailed deer are valuable because people eat their meat.

“Collateral damage is the primary remover of wildlife,” he said. One example is “the ceaseless spread of invasive species” around the Earth. Whales, once hunted for their oil, were saved from extinction by the invention of the petroleum industry. Species driven north (in the northern hemisphere) by warming oceans have collisions with ships.

“Once on a landscape, invasive species never stop spreading.” “Any person can introduce a new one into the US or from the US.” It is hard to find a native reptile in Florida anymore. Polar bears, he said, will have to learn to live in forests because there won’t be any ice. “The more cracks a species can live in,” he said, “the more chance of species survival.”

“The long term consequences of invasive species,” he said, “is beyond my imagination.”

Mastodons, he said, were killed by Native peoples who had a massive influence on wildlife. Mastodons, he said, were still here 10,000 years ago.

There is not much evidence bison were ever in New York despite the City of Buffalo being named after them, but they clearly were in SW Pennsylvania. Beavers, he said, were valuable enough for people to risk their lives for. Muskrats, smaller than beavers, survived because it was easier for them to hide. Beavers went extinct in New York around 1800 but have since been reintroduced. The now-extinct Eastern elk was in New York until 1842.

After a moose wandered into Glens Falls in 1981, DEC had an internal debate about whether it was a game animal or an endangered species. Mr. Hicks said moose and deer do not coexist well because deer have diseases fatal to moose. He said moose can live in thirty-six inches of snow and deer about twelve. Moose could live in the Adirondacks and deer in the river valleys. The last moose killed in New York was in 1861 near Marion River.

A conservation ethic emerged with Theodore Roosevelt who saw moose as cool. People who possess such an ethic will say “I hope my kids can see one.” He said moose came back on their own in the Adirondacks but will be wiped out as climate change allows more deer to move in.

The last authenticated mountain lion sighting in New York was in 1905. Mr. Hicks said many New Yorkers are certain they have seen one and he has heard some memorable stories of their “sightings.” He described a tagged one that may have been seen in Lake George a few years back and soon thereafter killed by a car in Connecticut. It had traveled from South Dakota through the midwest and Canada into New York. “Ontario is not a state yet,” he joked, but “may come in as a county.”

Passenger pigeons were probably the most common bird in world history, he said. The final one died in a zoo in 2014. He said John Audubon saw millions fly overhead in Kentucky for three continuous days in 1813 while he traveled fifty-five miles.

Proof the conservation ethic works is that once DDT was banned, several bird species including Eagles, recovered. “Eagles are doing remarkably well in New York,” he said.

The Allegheny woodrat is susceptible to a parasite and was practically wiped out. He said about fifty live in the Palisades on the New York-New Jersey border.

“Almost all migratory birds are in decline in New York,” he said. Fungi are killing the nineteen salamander species in New York. Peregrine falcons are doing as well as any species.

“Nearly all species of native New York trees are threatened by invasive species that are here or on the way.”

Speaking of insects, he recalled that when he was a kid, windshields had to be cleaned each time gas was purchased due to so many crashing into them. “We have nowhere near the insects we used to have,” he said. “Something really substantial is happening and we are not going to learn it in this [Trump] administration.”

When thousands of bats died from White Nose Syndrome on March 14, 2007 at Haile’s Cave in Thatcher Park, New York employed only one bat specialist. Within a year, their numbers declined from 22,000 to 1100. He saw piles of dead bats a foot deep. Bats flew out of the cave and dive-died into a snowbank.

Bats that survive hibernate at higher temperatures that can kill the fungus. He said some bat species are doing well. Of the nine species in New York, three migrate south annually and six remain in New York. He said there are two species of flying squirrels in New York.

Moving toward his conclusion, he said the more people there are the more we must accommodate other species. Individual trees thousands of years old are dying now. Water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit last summer. Coral reefs, he said, are collapsing at a rapid pace.

These problems are solvable, he said, except the most powerful people in the United States do not want to. “The worst we can do is nothing. Far too many people are concerned but do nothing. Develop a conservation ethic.” He concluded his presentation with, “We are not going to get another world.”

During the group discussion, he said “most species die off quickly and we never know why.” “Lobbying is a numbers thing.” People who care about the environment vote at lower levels than the general public.

Lynne Jackson said that even an environmentally conscious elected official must be lobbied. Al agreed saying people doing good things need support and thank yous. “If you don’t say anything, you don’t exist,” he said.

He urged people to check out the Merlin Bird ID app to identify bird calls and said, “If you want to live in a world of ignorance, make no noise.”

Russel Ziemba had the final comment saying the late SPB President, Rezsin Adams, had been a student of Rachel Carson.