One year ago, the Natural Areas Conservancy was asked to stand beside Mayor Adams in Alley Pond Park at a press conference as he made an Earth Day announcement of a historic $2.4 million investment in our citywide, 300-mile network of nature trails.
Seeing our executive director standing beside the mayor was a proud moment for our entire team. It was even more exciting to see the mayor help complete a wooden puncheon trail structure with NAC and NYC Parks Trails staff.
Our internship program manager was thrilled to know that a new pipeline of 26 permanent jobs at NYC Parks had been created — jobs that were perfectly suited to our network of talented NAC interns who she helps mentor and manage each year, all of whom are City University students.
Our advocacy for this investment in our trail system began with the release of our “Strategic Trails Plan for New York City” in 2021. To have the mayor announce this investment in the 2023 “PlaNYC: Getting Sustainability Done” report last Earth Day felt like long overdue validation from the city about the importance of caring for and expanding access to the more than 20,000 acres of natural areas in our parks.
We could also breathe a sigh of relief that our dedicated colleagues at NYC Parks had the resources needed to best care for our trails system.
Last fall, our hopes for this funding were erased with the mayor’s announcement that 5% of the FY24 Parks budget was being cut. Former interns who were in the process of interviewing for Trails positions were suddenly told the program wasn’t moving forward, dashing their hopes of full-time work in our natural areas. It was devastating for our entire team, and left us feeling like the Earth Day announcement was simply for optics, instead of a commitment to do the work.
For less than the cost of a new park bathroom, the city could have created dozens of green jobs, opened up safe access to 10,000 acres of parkland, and taken meaningful action to protect our urban forested natural areas. Instead, as is so often the case with the parks budget, the city walked back on its promise.
While trail formalization may seem like a “nice-to-have” public space amenity, it is a critical component of creating a more equitable, safe, and resilient park system. With nearly one third of NYC’s park system designated as natural areas, there is an urgent need to fully expand access to these spaces in a way that both invites the public in safely, and helps ensure the health of our increasingly fragile natural ecosystems.
Better trail management reduces and prevents forest fragmentation, helps control invasive species, and ensures that our urban forested natural areas can continue to provide benefits in the form of cooling, carbon capture, and flooding mitigation.
In addition to the loss of more meaningful access to our natural areas, the city also lost the chance to create a pipeline of permanent green job opportunities. Since 2016, NAC’s internship program has served as a springboard for young New Yorkers interested in conservation science to receive the technical and professional training needed to enter the green workforce. Many alumni of our internship program are native New Yorkers who aspire to serve their hometown through employment in the environmental field.
But full-time opportunities in the sector remain scarce, and many of the positions available to do this work at NYC Parks have been funded by the City Council on a one-shot basis, leading to a sense of instability among the ranks of Parks staff who work in the natural resources, forestry, and Urban Park Ranger divisions, all of which play important roles in the management, restoration, and programming of our natural areas.
Simply put, it’s hard to remain in a job where you don’t know if you’ll be employed by June 30 (the city’s budget deadline) each year.
We believe the answer is simple — fund people, create jobs. The NAC is just one organization in the broad coalition of hundreds of park advocates who have been doing this work for years. These advocates have never given up on pushing the city to do right by everyday New Yorkers by better funding its parks.
Right now, City Hall has the opportunity to reverse these harmful cuts and finally acknowledge what advocates have been saying for decades — that every single New Yorker deserves access to clean, safe, beautiful, and resilient parks. With leadership from the mayor and City Council, this can be the year that the city finally plays fair for parks.
Walker is the senior manager of external affairs of the Natural Areas Conservancy.
