MANLIUS, NY — Elegant white swans are a striking presence in this village in upstate New York, which is less than two square kilometers in size. Their likeness appears on village flags, community centers and welcome signs. The “Swan Festival” is celebrated every autumn.
Residents say it is difficult to imagine Manlius without the mute swans that have lived in a pond in the village center for more than 100 years. Until recently, they didn’t have to do that.
But the violent murder of one of the swans of the village in 2023 sparked a battle with regulators that forced Manlius to make a difficult decision about the birds’ future: the village that wants to keep them is put at odds with a state that sees them as problems.
By the end of the year, Manlius must choose: keep the four existing mute swans but sterilize them, or keep just two of the same sex. Either option would end the village’s annual tradition of seeing the swans hatch and raise cygnets, and could mark the beginning of the end of their presence in Manlius.
“I don’t think they understand how important it is to this village,” said Mayor Paul Whorrall, a lifelong resident who passed the swans on his paper route as a boy and is loath to see them go under his care. “If you take away the swans, you take away a large part of the identity of the village.”
In recent years, New York has taken steps to limit the number of mute swans within its borders and manage them as an invasive species whose numbers have increased 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 graced 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 enormous birds disrupt ecosystems, degrade water quality with their waste and eat as much as 3.6 kilograms of submerged vegetation every day. With a wingspan of almost 2.1 meters and a weight of 9 to 11 kilograms, the swans have also had aggressive encounters with people and driven away native animals.
Under a 2019 management plan, mute swans may only be possessed with permission from the DEC.
Manlius had a permit that would last until 2025, allowing the company to maintain what was the status quo: a pair of adult swans named Manny and Faye lived in the pond and cygnets hatched each spring, eventually being transferred out of state earlier . they were old enough to reproduce.
That all changed last yearwhen police say three Syracuse teenagers climbed over a fence and took Faye and her four young cygnets. The teens decapitated Faye, took her to a relative’s home 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 Pennsylvania.
Now the four cygnets, two males and two females, are the only ones in the pond.
This means that Manlius no longer meets the conditions of his permit, which states that he owns two adult swans. A revised permit allowing the village to keep the four swans expires at the end of this year.
With no chance of baby mute swans coming, residents fear that the current options offered by DEC officials – sterilizing all four or keeping just one gender – will mean the end of mute swans in Manlius. The agency has proposed breeding similar trumpeter swans instead, an option opposed by many.
“I don’t see any reason not to have them live here,” said village resident Martha Ballard Lacy, 89, who fell in love with Manny and Faye during her daily walks around the Manlius Swan Pond. Lacy regularly photographed the couple, who had been at the pond since 2010, as they tended a nest of eggs.
“The city loves having a place where they can identify with something that has been here for a hundred years,” Lacy says.
The state has struggled for a long time with what to do about mute swans. In 2013, the DEC announced a goal to eradicate New York’s free-ranging mute swans by 2025, but plans to shoot or euthanize them and destroy their eggs sparked public outrage.
Revisions followed, and in 2019 the agency completed its latest version plan which, rather than elimination, aims to stabilize or reduce their numbers through non-lethal means such as egg manipulation – thus preventing the development of fertilized eggs – although the plan allows for the killing of swans that under certain circumstances can be captured or moved.
Whorrall doesn’t dispute that mute swans are problematic elsewhere. But he says disrupting the one in Manlius will do nothing to solve the problem. The village’s swans are housed in the fenced pond where they have shelter and are fed a specialized diet of vegetation and food.
On a recent afternoon, a resident threw broken corn through the fence as the swans bobbed upside down to retrieve it.
“They’re really fun to watch, and families come by,” Lacy said.
With the Dec. 31 deadline approaching, Whorrall said the village wants to maintain the status quo. Leaders say they have done everything the state asked, including installing educational displays at the pond. The village even agreed to sterilize all the baby swans before removing them if it would save the breeding tradition, Whorrall said, but the DEC withdrew that option after raising them.
In a statement, the DEC said it “continues to work closely with the Village of Manlius to ensure that ownership of swans is fully consistent with the objectives of New York State and Atlantic Ocean Flyway Management objectives,” as set out in an agreement among 17 states to reduce the ecological impact of the swans.
Villagers say the situation has made Faye’s death even more painful.
“People are going to cause crimes and unfortunately that’s part of life and you just have to do what you can to move forward,” Whorrall said. “And that’s what we’re doing, we’re trying to go further. And they make it difficult to move on.”