Long Island wildlife experts have employed the help of citizen scientists in their three-year survey of the island’s terrestrial and semi-aquatic mammals. They say there are 27 of them — some that have expanded their presence, some brand new residents and some that remain a mystery.
A survey like this has not been done on Long Island since the 1960s. It was led by Paul Connor, a scientist with the New York State Museum and Science Service. His 1971 publication The Mammals of Long Island, New York, focused entirely on Suffolk County, and small mammals from shrew to squirrel-size.
Now, the South Fork Natural History Museum and Seatuck Environmental Association have teamed up to fill in that data gap with the help of Long Island residents. Trapping, tracks and trail cameras were some of the ways different species were documented. Folks can share photos to an app called iNaturalist. An interactive map allows users to pinpoint exactly where animals, tracks, or roadkill were spotted.
Mike Bottini with Seatuck presented some of the survey's results from year two at a lecture at the SOFO Museum in Bridgehampton.
“We all own a piece of the East End of Long Island, whether it’s a quarter of an acre or a couple of acres. And the cumulative impact of how we steward our piece of turf, it adds up.”
Some of those more mysterious species include mink, long-tailed weasel, and gray fox. The hope is to discover whether these animals are completely gone or in serious decline.
The gray fox, once the dominant fox species on Long Island, has not been documented since 2008. The latest survey results show the red fox has expanded across both Nassau and Suffolk counties. Bottini said an imbalanced ecosystem could be to blame for that.
"We call this a meso-predator. We don't have any apex predators on Long Island that hunt in a terrestrial environment," Bottini said. "There's nothing regulating red fox, and what's the other meso-predator we have that's super common? Racoon. There's nothing that is keeping those populations in check."
For many years, Long Island has lacked predators to control populations of deer and smaller mammals. When English settlers first arrived, they practically exterminated all of the island's top predators, including bears, bobcat and mountain lions.
But a new predator has arrived on Long Island since the last survey: the eastern coyote. Frank Quevedo, SOFO executive director, spoke to the WSHU in February about the coyote's expansion.
"This is a welcoming sight for another predator to come in and control the biodiversity, which is so necessary to keep Long Island and the natural environment thriving and healthy," Quevedo said.
Coyote, which had never been documented on Long Island until 2009, have been appearing on trail cameras more often since the survey began, and further out east.
"Hearing from scientists who are actually studying the pathways of coyotes coming to Long Island, we believe they're either swimming from Connecticut, from Fishers Island to the North and South Fork, or taking the corridor of the Long Island Railroad," Quevedo said. "From past experiences of people in the Bronx or Nassau County, they find these coyotes in corridors where there are railways and roads."
More predators are needed to balance out the number of white-tailed deer, which have seen a population boom across Nassau and Suffolk counties since the last survey. They have even expanded to Fire and Fishers Islands.
Bottini said he would like to see a feasibility study done on reintroducing bobcats to Long Island. He said they would do well on the East End with small home ranges of a few hundred acres.
"They're gonna be less controversial than the coyotes, and not go after someone's little dog" he said. "They kind of stay out of trouble. They're all over Connecticut!"
Other early findings from the survey include an eastward expansion of smaller mammals like woodchucks, chipmunks, muskrats and flying squirrels. River otters are also reclaiming a territory on Long Island after a more than 200-year absence.
