The New York Times-20080128-In the Woods and Streams of New York State- an Artemis for Modern Times

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In the Woods and Streams of New York State, an Artemis for Modern Times

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Patricia Riexinger, the new director of New York State's Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources, stood in the falling snow here and peered through her binoculars, looking for bald eagles. Suddenly, a bird leapt from a tree and soared out of sight, and Ms. Riexinger, visibly excited, set off in pursuit, traversing streams and sloshing across muddy slopes.

A wildlife biologist who has spent more than 30 years in the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, Ms. Riexinger was appointed last fall to lead the agency's largest division. She is the first woman to preside over the agency, which, with a staff of 425, regulates all fishing and hunting in the state.

Ms. Riexinger (pronounced REX-in-jer), 53, a lean woman with silver-streaked hair pulled back in a clip, is also responsible for protecting an incredibly diverse array of animal species: 1,100 vertebrates and countless invertebrates, many of them increasingly threatened by habitat loss and the incursion of invasive species.

One of her goals, Ms. Riexinger said, is to restore a sense of wonder to a public that is increasingly out of touch with nature.

She asks a visitor: Did you know that New York is home to sea horses? Or that the most harvested fish, pound for pound, in the state's ocean waters is squid? Or that the hognose snake lives only in sandy pine barrens from Saratoga to Long Island and feasts exclusively on toads?

One of the biggest threats to conservation over time is from people losing contact with the natural world, Ms. Riexinger said.

Most kids, when they think of outdoor recreation, think of playing soccer on a mowed field. They're not in the woods flipping over rocks and looking for salamanders or watching a squirrel root around.

Moving up in a world of outdoorsmen (emphasis on men) was not always easy, Ms. Riexinger conceded. After working in the field for the state agency for three summers in the 1970s, she said, she almost did not get a job. There was a woman assistant manager who threatened her boss with an equal opportunity lawsuit if he didn't hire me, she recalled. She went to bat for me.

There were awkward moments after that, especially in the field. When she worked at hunting check stations, Ms. Riexinger recalled, the hunters would bring their birds in to be weighed, and they were used to being rough and gruff, telling guy stories, but they didn't know how to talk to me.

She added, I would just chuckle.

Environmental advocates have greeted Ms. Riexinger's appointment with enthusiasm.

More than anyone else in the division, she really advocated for the full scope of wildlife in the state, not just game, said David VanLuven, director of the Hudson River Estuary Landscape for the Nature Conservancy's eastern New York chapter, who worked closely with Ms. Riexinger for almost five years when he oversaw the state's Natural Heritage Program. (The agency contracts with the Nature Conservancy to manage certain programs.)

But Ms. Riexinger's ascension also caused a frisson of anxiety among some hunting enthusiasts, who were concerned not only that she was a woman but that her background was rooted more in conservation than in hunting.

Howard Cushing, past president of the New York State Conservation Council, a membership organization that represents hunters, anglers and trappers, said: There were some people who attacked her who are not credible. What matters with the people who manage our resources is that they listen to us and address problems, and she's doing that. I think it's only fair that people give her a chance.

Ms. Riexinger, who recently completed a master's degree in biodiversity, conservation and policy from the State University at Albany, has sought to instill an enthusiasm for nature in her personal life. She was once the reptile and amphibian specialist in the agency's Endangered Species Unit, and she used to tote a bucket of milk snakes into her children's classrooms every June. As a Girl Scout leader, she gives the red-backed salamander -- the most common vertebrate of the Northeast forests -- star billing on campouts.

She said she hopes to use her new post to spread that passion on a wider scale. I think we're poorer as people, emotionally and ethically, if we don't have some connection to and respect for the natural world, she said.

To that end, the agency has just published the first issue of Conservationist for Kids, a magazine geared toward fourth-grade readers and available to schools statewide. In addition, Ms. Riexinger would like the state to save open space near where people live, in addition to tried-and-true wilderness areas like the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains.

Of the 1,100 cataloged vertebrate species in New York, 55 percent are considered secure, Ms. Riexinger said. About 10 percent have vanished from the state, including the mountain lion, the wolf and the badger, and 35 percent are at risk, with a number of those classified as endangered or threatened.

Hunters, whose numbers are declining in New York, are a valuable source of support for the environment, Ms. Riexinger said. Fees from fishing and hunting licenses finance more than half of her division's $57 million annual budget.

The value in my mind is that it gets people outside, and then there's an advocacy for protecting habitat, said Ms. Riexinger, who holds a current hunting license and hails from a hunting family. In her 20s, she hunted ducks and deer.

Ms. Riexinger already has had to tend to some ecological brush fires, including a recent die-off of hundreds of crows from a virus. And over the last several years, thousands of loons, grebes and other water birds have washed up dead on the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, the victims of botulism.

That broke my heart, said Ms. Riexinger, a devoted birder who began her career with the department in the Waterfowl Unit.

Then there are the white-tailed deer, which spread Lyme disease, cause car accidents and devour not just gardens but, in some areas, whole forest understories -- the small trees, saplings and shrubs that grow close to the forest floor. Beginning this fall, the state will take into account the effect that deer have on plant diversity when determining deer hunting quotas, Ms. Riexinger said.

Her division is also nudging local officials and private landowners to enact relatively small changes that could have significant benefits.

An interagency committee, for instance, is pushing for a redesign of culverts so that streams will flow freely under roads. Culverts interrupt the movement of small animals and also that of woody material, a crucial link in the food chain, with decomposing sticks and leaves providing sustenance for insects.

Perhaps the biggest variable in the ecosystem is climate change. Ms. Riexinger worries about the fate of certain animals, from the moose to the mink frog, that rely on the maple, birch and beech trees of the Northern forest. Her division is working with the Lands and Forest Division to draft a report on climate change. The goal is to assist animals throughout their range as they move north in response to global warming.

Maples will get stressed by warmer winters and hotter summers, she said. Some of the boreal species may be lost over the next 150 years. But we may see new species from farther south that may fill new roles.

[Illustration]PHOTO: Patricia Riexinger, a wildlife biologist, looking for bald eagles on the banks of the Mohawk River near Cohoes Falls. (PHOTOGRAPH BY NATHANIEL BROOKS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)