A New York village known for its majestic mute swans faces a difficult choice after one is killed

MANLIUS, N.Y. (AP) — Elegant white swans have an outsize presence in this upstate New York village measuring less than 2 square miles. Their likeness is on village flags, community centers and welcome signs. “Swan Fest” is celebrated each fall.

Residents say it’s hard to imagine Manlius without the mute swans that have inhabited a pond in the village center for more than 100 years. Until recently, they didn’t have to.

But the violent killing of one of the village's swans in 2023 set off a battle with regulators that is forcing Manlius to make a difficult decision about the birds' future: it's put the village that wants to keep them at odds with a state that views them as trouble.

By the end of the year, Manlius must choose: Keep its four existing mute swans but sterilize them, or retain only two of the same sex. Either option would end the village's annual tradition of watching the swans hatch and raise cygnets, and could signal the beginning of the end of their presence in Manlius altogether.

“I don’t think they understand how important it is to this village,” said Mayor Paul Whorrall, a lifelong resident who as a boy passed the swans on his paper route and is loath to see them go under his watch. “If you take away the swans, you’re taking away a lot of the identity of the village.”

In recent years, New York has moved to limit the number of mute swans within its borders, managing them as an invasive species whose numbers have grown since they were brought over from Europe in the late 1800s. Before escaping or being released into the wild, the majestic birds with long curved necks beautified ponds on private estates in the lower Hudson Valley and on Long Island, where most of the swans — an estimated 2,200 — are still concentrated.

But the Department of Environmental Conservation says the huge birds disrupt ecosystems, degrade water quality with their waste and eat as much as 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms) of submerged vegetation daily. With wingspans of nearly 7 feet (2.1 meters) and weighing 20 to 25 pounds (9 to 11 kilograms), the swans have also had aggressive run-ins with people and displaced native wildlife.

Under a 2019 management plan, mute swans can only be possessed with DEC authorization.

Manlius had a license that was supposed to last through 2025, allowing it to uphold what had been the status quo: a pair of adult swans named Manny and Faye lived in the pond and each spring hatched cygnets, which were eventually transferred out of state before they were old enough to reproduce.

That all changed last year, when police say three Syracuse teenagers climbed a fence and took Faye and her four cygnets. The teens decapitated Faye, brought her to a relative to cook and ate her, police said. The babies were recovered and returned to the pond, but Manny behaved aggressively toward them and was sent to live in Pennsylvania.

Now, the four young swans, two male and two female, are the only ones in the pond.

That means Manlius no longer meets the terms of its license, which specifies that it possess two adult swans. A revised license allowing the village to have the four swans will run out at the end of this year.

With no chance that baby mute swans will come along, residents fear that the current options offered by DEC officials — sterilize all four or keep only one sex — will be the end of mute swans in Manlius. The agency has suggested breeding similar trumpeter swans instead, an option many oppose.

“I see no reason not to let them live here,” said village resident Martha Ballard Lacy, 89, who became enamored with Manny and Faye on her daily walks around the Manlius Swan Pond. Lacy frequently photographed the pair, which had been at the pond since 2010, as they tended to a nest of eggs.

“The town loves having a place to come to and identify themselves with something that’s been here for 100 years,” Lacy said.

The state has long wrestled with what to do about mute swans. In 2013, the DEC announced a goal of eliminating free-ranging mute swans in New York by 2025, but its plans to shoot or euthanize them and destroy their eggs drew public outcry.

Revisions followed and in 2019, the agency finalized its latest plan that, instead of elimination, aims to stabilize or reduce their numbers by nonlethal means like egg-addling — stopping fertilized eggs from developing — although the plan allows for killing swans that can't be captured or relocated in some circumstances.

Whorrall doesn't dispute that mute swans are problematic elsewhere. But he says disrupting the ones in Manlius will do nothing to solve the problem. The village's swans are contained to the fenced-in pond where they have shelter and a specialized diet of vegetation and feed.

On a recent afternoon, a resident tossed cracked corn through the fence as the swans bobbed upside down to retrieve it.

“They really are fun to see, and families come and stop by,” Lacy said.

With the Dec. 31 deadline approaching, Whorrall said the village wants to maintain the status quo, saying leaders have done everything the state has asked, including installing educational displays at the pond. The village even agreed to sterilize any baby swans before removing them if it would save the breeding tradition, Whorrall said, but the DEC rescinded the option after raising it.

In a statement, the DEC said it “continues to work closely with the village of Manlius to ensure its possession of swans is wholly consistent with New York State and Atlantic flyway management objectives" outlined in a 17-state agreement to reduce the ecological impacts of the swans.

Village residents say the situation has made Faye’s death even more painful.

“People are going to cause crimes and and unfortunately that’s part of life, and you've got to just do what you can to move on,” Whorrall said. “And that’s what we’re doing, we’re trying to move on. And they’re making it hard to move on.”