Advocates propose preserving Bedford wildlife corridors

On this map produced for the town by Mianus River Gorge Inc., wildlife corridors are the areas in gray. COURTESY OF TOWN OF BEDFORD

By JEFF MORRIS

An idea that came out of the Conservation Board several years ago, spearheaded by former chair Simon Skolnik and current Chair Marina Kubicek, has resulted in three proposals for amending town laws.

In June 2025, the Town Board heard a presentation from Ted Fink, founder and principal planner of Greenplan Inc., on the status of a state Wildlife Corridors Grant. On Tuesday, they heard from him again, this time to recommend policy changes for the town to consider regarding wildlife corridors protection.

Fink is a Rhinebeck-based consultant providing specialized planning services to New York state municipalities. He said the overall proposal was made a number of years ago by the conservation board to the Department of Environmental Conservation, “for what they called a ‘Wildlife Corridor Overlay Zoning District Draft Ordinance,’ and that’s a mouthful.” 

That, Fink said, was an effort by the state to map important wildlife corridors that the state thought would be better for meeting wildlife needs, both in the town as well as outside of the town, and to link these all together. 

“These are areas that they identified as basically throughways for wildlife to be able to move among all the various uses that exist within the developed areas in the town of Bedford,” said Fink. 

Supervisor Ellen Calves said the Conservation Board obtained a grant in 2021 to map wildlife corridors and to draft legislation to present to the Town Board, and this is the culmination of that effort. 

Fink said the state was trying to find a community that would be open to the idea of preserving the most important corridors that are being used by wildlife, and to use this as a model that could be used statewide. Bedford fit the bill, got the grant, and he applied to work on it. 

Identifying corridors

The first phase of the project was conducted by Mianus River Gorge Inc., which identified and mapped wildlife corridors and habitats in town. At the time he began work, said Fink, the town’s new comprehensive plan was being prepared, and he wasn’t sure how that would affect the project. But, he said, as he engaged in discussions with Planning Director Jesica Youngblood, Skolnik, and Kubicek, “it seemed as if it would fit very nicely.” 

One of the recommendations made in the comprehensive plan, noted Fink, was to more readily facilitate conservation development types. “So when I saw that, it seemed as if the conservation subdivision development rules that the town had, were really in need of a refresh — that they had been prepared probably back sometime in the 1980s.” 

He said he put his focus on rewriting the rules for conservation subdivision development so that they were responsive to the comprehensive plan recommendation.

Fink presented three proposals. The main one is to amend the law facilitating conservation development for open space preservation and ecological protection. Alongside that is a proposed amendment to the zoning law to update the town’s exterior illumination and glare regulations, and a third proposal updates the zoning law regarding fences. Fink said the lighting regulations would apply townwide, while the fence law would be specifically for wildlife corridor areas.

The conservation development proposal, Fink said, is a process that really favors open space preservation while accommodating development. He said it is considered a density-neutral tool; there is no diminution of the number of lots that a developer or landowner wanting to subdivide their property would be entitled to, but it would allow them to come up with a design that identifies important resources that may be present on a site, including any wildlife corridors. 

Fink said in addition, he looked at how they can make the process more user-friendly, and tried spelling out exactly what the conservation subdivision development process would entail.

New procedures

“It seemed as if it was important to create a whole set of new procedures here for how the process works, who do you go to first, what are the various steps that have to be taken in order to get a new subdivision approved if it were to be a conservation subdivision,” he said.

There were two other separate draft local laws prepared, said Fink, because the state “wanted to see other possible ways that the town could take some actions that would assist in wildlife corridor movements.” 

He looked at wildlife-friendly fencing designs that would not interfere with and block potential pathways that wildlife are already using in town, and could be integrated into the zoning law.

“Essentially that would mean fencing that’s designed in a way where small wildlife could get under the fence,” he said, while amending existing fence height regulations for a lesser height in corridor areas so larger wildlife will be able to jump over the fence. 

Lighting regulations

Fink said lighting regulations were also something that had not been updated in a while, and in particular the comprehensive plan had recommended that dark sky lighting guidelines from the Dark Sky Association be included. His third separate draft of local law would revise some of the lighting specifications in the zoning code.

Fink showed the map that was developed by Mianus Gorge after studying and tracking key species and their movements through the town. He said the map is one of the resources that would be used in developing a plan for a conservation subdivision development. Youngblood said she would ask Mianus if they can adjust the colors to make the map a bit clearer, and it would be posted on the town website.

Calves said she would like to delve more deeply into the proposed conservation development changes at a future work session, where they could discuss how to make the process easier, and board member Midge Iorio agreed.