Yards for Pollinators Plan - New York

A New York State residential native planting cost-share program modeled on Minnesota's Lawns to Legumes

Background and the Problem

New York is home to more than 450 native wild bee species, plus hundreds of additional pollinator species including butterflies, moths, beetles, and native flies. These species are essential to the state's agriculture and biodiversity — yet surveys indicate that 40 to 60 percent of pollinator species native to New York are at risk of disappearing from the state. Habitat loss is the primary driver, compounded by pesticide exposure and the fragmentation of remaining natural areas.

Residential lawns and landscaped yards represent a largely untapped conservation resource. The suburban and exurban landscape of New York State — the Hudson Valley, Long Island, the Capital Region, the Finger Lakes, and beyond — encompasses millions of parcels managed as conventional turf. These properties could serve as critical stepping stones in regional habitat connectivity if even small portions were transitioned to native plantings supporting pollinators.

Despite the scale of this opportunity, no statewide program exists to help New York homeowners and renters make the transition. The NYS DEC's Pollinator Protection Plan (2016, updated 2022) identifies residential habitat as a priority but provides no structured funding mechanism to support it. Isolated efforts — the Long Island Native Plant Initiative's community grants, the Town of North Hempstead's rebate program — demonstrate both the feasibility and public appetite for such programs, but they remain fragmented and locally limited.

The Minnesota Model: Lawns to Legumes

Minnesota's Lawns to Legumes program, launched in 2019 and administered by the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) in partnership with Blue Thumb – Planting for Clean Water, offers a direct and proven template for what New York lacks. The program provides cost-share reimbursement grants for installing native pollinator habitat, free technical assistance and coaching, neighborhood-scale demonstration grants, and a weighted lottery prioritizing mapped pollinator priority areas.

The program launched with a $900,000 appropriation from Minnesota's Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund. Its reach has grown year over year, with funding now also drawn from the state's general fund. Eligibility extends to both homeowners and renters with any outdoor planting space, including container gardens on decks. The weighted lottery that distributes individual grants factors in both priority habitat geography and statewide regional distribution, ensuring participation is not concentrated in a single area.

The New York Proposal: Yards for Pollinators

New York should establish a parallel program — the New York Yards for Pollinators Program — to be administered by the NYS DEC in partnership with the NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets and a network of regional nonprofit partners with native planting expertise.

Core Program Elements

Alignment with New York's Existing Commitments

This proposal directly advances several of New York's stated conservation priorities:

• NYS 30x30: The DEC's 30x30 Strategies and Methodologies document (2024) identifies private residential and suburban lands as underutilized conservation assets. A cost-share residential native planting program is precisely the kind of locally-grounded, high-participation mechanism the 30x30 framework lacks at the residential scale.
• NYS Pollinator Protection Plan: The 2022 updated plan calls for expanding residential pollinator habitat but provides no funded delivery mechanism. This program supplies what the plan recommends.
• Climate Smart Communities: Native plantings provide measurable co-benefits in stormwater management, carbon sequestration, and urban heat island reduction — all priorities under New York's Climate Smart Communities framework.

Legislative and Funding Mechanism

We recommend appropriating initial funding from the Environmental Protection Fund (EPF), which has historically supported habitat conservation and land stewardship programs. Annual appropriations of $3–5 million would support 7,500–12,500 individual grants per cycle statewide, based on Minnesota's per-project cost structure, with additional funding for the Neighborhood Pathways tier and technical assistance infrastructure.

Companion legislation should:

• Establish the program in statute, specifying the DEC as lead agency with AGM co-administration
• Authorize the EPF to support individual residential cost-share grants (currently EPF is structured toward organizational grantees; this requires either a statutory clarification or a dedicated residential habitat line)
• Direct the DEC to develop and maintain a statewide Pollinator Priority Area GIS layer to inform weighted grant distribution
• Require that the program's planting materials reflect regional plant ecotypes appropriate to New York's distinct ecological zones

Why This Matters at the Local Level

For municipalities and Conservation Advisory Councils across New York, this proposal addresses a gap that local governments encounter repeatedly: residents want to do something meaningful for conservation on their own properties but lack access to technical guidance, vetted plant lists, and financial support to make the transition. The result is high individual motivation that is never aggregated into landscape-scale change.

A statewide program with a neighborhood-scale demonstration tier would allow municipalities to serve as active partners — identifying priority corridors, facilitating local workshops, and embedding the program in their open space and conservation planning work. In communities with active Conservation Advisory Councils, this becomes a concrete vehicle for the kind of locally-grounded, incremental conservation that the 30x30 framework acknowledges but does not yet support.

Recommended Action

We call on:

• The New York State Legislature to introduce and pass enabling legislation establishing the New York Yards for Pollinators Program and authorizing EPF funding for individual residential habitat grants
• The NYS DEC and Department of Agriculture and Markets to develop program guidelines, regional plant lists, and technical assistance infrastructure in consultation with Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Pollinator Network at Cornell
• County Soil and Water Conservation Districts to serve as regional program partners for outreach, on-site consultation, and local coordination
• Municipalities and Conservation Advisory Councils to adopt sample native landscaping ordinance language and identify local pollinator priority corridors that can anchor Neighborhood Pathways grants

Minnesota proved the concept. Ten thousand residential projects across 87 counties in seven years. New York has the population, the agricultural landscape, the ecological diversity, and the institutional infrastructure to match that — and a climate crisis that makes doing so more urgent.