New York state lawmakers are going after an unexpected political issue: pen-raised pheasants. The bill, known as New York A888, was introduced on January 8, 2025 by three democratic assemblymembers: Linda B. Rosenthal, Anna Kelles, and Jeffrey Dinowitz. The legislation would “prohibit the state’s participation in artificial pheasant propagation activities” and “close any state-owned or operated pheasant production facilities.”
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) releases over 30,000 pheasants each fall for the public to hunt. The program is funded by Pittman-Robertson funds and is meant to provide hunting opportunity for a species that otherwise doesn’t have significant huntable wild populations in the state. New York is not alone in stocking pen-raised pheasants; many other states do so, not only in the East, but throughout the country. Hunting pen-raised pheasants is considered a good opportunity for outreach for youth and new hunters, and as well as for developing young bird dogs.
But according to several New York lawmakers, it’s inhumane. Rosenthal told the New York Times that the practice was “state sponsored cruelty.”
“It’s absurd and it makes New York State complicit in the slaughter of animals,” she said. “There’s no reason the state needs to engage in this practice.”
If passed, the bill would prohibit conservation funds—which come from hunters and anglers—from being used for pheasant rearing or stocking. It would also close Reynolds Game Farm, which currently produces thousands for birds each year.
Local hunters have come out strongly against the legislation—which presents a novel type of anti-hunting attack on the heels of attempts elsewhere in the country to outlaw some types of predator and bear hunting.
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“This shortsighted idea doesn’t simply close the state’s only pheasant production facility and leave New York’s youth with fewer outdoor opportunities, but it also advances the destruction of New York’s entire conservation framework,” wrote Colin J. Schmitt, former assemblymember and co-chair of the New York Legislative Sportsman Caucus, in Mid Hudson News. “This legislation, while announced as pro-animal, will actually cause more long-term harm by undermining the wildlife conservation funding model used to benefit game and non-game species.”
