Aligning City Forest Management by Engaging Community Partners in New York City

New York City contains 10,000 acres of forested natural areas, 8.5 million residents, and dozens of organizations dedicated to improving the condition of natural areas. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks) manages the majority 7,300-acres of natural area forests through hands-on work and contracts overseen by the Division of Forestry, Horticulture and Natural Resources. Additional capacity to manage and steward NYC Parks’ forest resources is created through nurturing community organizations by the non-profit Natural Areas Conservancy (NAC). This case study discusses how NAC’s Conservancy Engagement Program aligns forest management under NYC’s forest management plan to care for the forest.

In a nutshell, this resource offers:

• Examples of capacity building for community park partners in urban forested natural areas.
• A description of how efforts to align urban forested natural area management under one approach can snowball to result in more resources.

How to use this resource:

• As an approach to unite multiple forest management entities under one strategy for forest management.

Author: Helen Forgione

Date published: 2020

Point of contact: Clara Pregitzer, Deputy Director of Conservation Science, Natural Areas Conservancy, clara.pregitzer@naturalareasnyc.org 

Citation: Forgione, H. M. 2020. Aligning City Forest Management by Engaging Community Partners in New York City. Cities and the Environment (CATE): Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 26.

Resource is available online here.