I think for #2 and #3, you need to appreciate that it's not actually about swifts, it's about getting some free press attention for a politician.

A few token swift bricks at sometime in the future, at someone else's expense, is so much easier than preserving land, or building habitat. As an added bonus, the extra regulation makes building new houses more complicated/tedious, and older, swift-free houses more valuable and illegal to build more of, so that's a win for everyone.