NYSEG osprey program subject of Lansing series

For the past 17 years, New York State Electric and Gas (NYSEG) has worked alongside Tompkins County environmentalists to help the osprey population around Cayuga Lake maintain their long-term homes.

The utility company has worked to install more than 200 nest boxes and fiberglass risers on utility poles for the local osprey population as part of its Osprey Outage Mitigation Program, which aims to provide safe nesting sites while increasing service reliability for electric customers.

Through the program, staff relocates new nests from hazardous locations on electric wires to safer boxes during the designated osprey off-season. Ospreys, a species cherished by the birding community throughout New York, have been settling around the edges of Cayuga Lake since 1990, according to Discover Cayuga Lake.

Every year, from March to August, ospreys return from South America to their nests, where they raise a new brood of fledglings, according to Discover Cayuga Lake.

The program will be the subject of the latest Salt Point Speaker Series event on Aug. 7 at 7 p.m. at the Lansing Town Hall. 

Paul Paradine, founder of the program and manager of NYSEG and Rochester Gas and Electric’s vegetation management, and Rosanna Hyde, a member of the rotational graduate program at NYSEG’s parent company Avangrid, both operate the program and will be the featured speakers.

“It’s been a really great partnership, not only for our communities, but also for ensuring that wildlife conservation is functioning well with electrical reliability,” Paradine said of the Osprey Outage Mitigation Program.

Hyde said that NYSEG’s efforts through the program have been successful, helping the osprey population rebound. 

“This has just been an amazing opportunity to support the osprey species itself, as about 50 years ago it was an endangered species,” she said. “But over those 50 years, [ospreys]have since recovered, which is kind of a success story. And NYSEG has been a great help in restoring that population.”

Hyde said that part of that period of endangerment for ospreys was due to pesticide use.

“In the 1970s was kind of the their lowest point in terms of population because of use of DDT as an insecticide at that point in time,” she said, adding that DDT was then outlawed by the United States government. “Since then, the osprey species has been able to recuperate on a wide scale, which is amazing.”

Utility companies like NYSEG are able to support the osprey population by installing nest boxes on utility infrastructure, Hyde said. 

“That infrastructure is essentially where they love to nest. They like open locations that are away from trees, and that is every utility pole that you’ll come across,” Hyde added. “Being that we have a prime location for them to nest, we’re able to install these nest boxes, which not only promotes safe nesting for them, but also promotes electric reliability for the utility, as well. So, it is a win-win on both the biodiversity standpoint, as well as the service reliability standpoint.” 

The program aims to ensure reliability for customers’ electric service, as well as a healthy population of ospreys in the area. 

“An osprey nest, for example, could have from one to three chicks on average, and a lot of our nests are in that upper range,” Paradine said. “That’s a reflection, not only of our program, but honestly, the ecology of Cayuga Lake, that there has been enough food supply for them.”

Eddie Velazquez is a local journalist who lives in Syracuse and covers the towns of Lansing and Ulysses. Velazquez can be reached at edvel37@gmail.com.