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New Rochelle Squirrel Institute Conservation · Breeding · Research
An Independent Wildlife Research Institute

Sustaining New York’s squirrel populations through science.

The New Rochelle Squirrel Institute studies and supports endangered squirrel species across the five boroughs of New York City, with active breeding programs and ecological research focused on species at risk of local extinction.

Programs

Managed Breeding

Coordinated breeding of native and regionally significant squirrel species, with a primary emphasis on the North American flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus).

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Research

Historical Ecology

Investigating the conditions that drove the New York flying squirrel population to local extinction in 1910, and what those findings imply for present-day conservation.

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Mission

Five-Borough Scope

Field work and population monitoring extend across the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, in partnership with regional zoos and academic collaborators.

About the Institute →

A note on our work.

The Institute’s scientific program is grounded in a single question: why did flying squirrels disappear from New York in the early twentieth century, and what does that loss tell us about the species still here today?

Answering that question is a long undertaking. It draws on breeding science, field ecology, archival records, and comparative work with related species — including the Pakistani woolly flying squirrel — whose biology illuminates the vulnerabilities of their North American kin.