Emily Walker
5:12:36
My name is Emily Walker, and I'm the senior manager of external affairs at the Natural Areas Conservancy.
5:12:40
We're a proud member of the PLAYFAIR and Forest for All NYC coalitions.
5:12:44
Thank you to chair Brannan and chair Krishnan for the opportunity to speak today.
5:12:48
We wanna start by thanking the city council for calling for restored funding for our natural area staff and your preliminary budget response.
5:12:55
We also thank mayor Adams for adding a $3,000,000 1 shot allocation for natural areas into the f y twenty six executive budget.
5:13:02
This is a meaningful investment in the care of our natural areas.
5:13:05
However, we urgently ask that this funding be made permanent and baselined in order to be effective.
5:13:10
In the FY twenty five budget, we lost 51 critical forest management positions and we are concerned that a one year restoration of funding will continue to leave us in an uncertain cycle of inadequate staffing and management in our natural areas.
5:13:24
In a city of 7,000,000 trees, 5,000,000 of them are located within our natural forested areas.
5:13:30
The mayor's decision to eliminate funding last year for forest management staff has drastically reduced the capacity of the city to meaningfully manage and address challenges in our forests, making them more susceptible to increasingly urgent concerns like the hundreds of brushfires that occurred in our parks last fall.
5:13:47
Last summer, the NAC conducted its first ecological assessment of forested natural areas in ten years and we found troubling signs of degrading forest health and quality across the city.
5:13:56
Our research found invasive vines present in 92% of the forest plots that our researchers visited and also found that our forest mid story is showing a decline in the number of native tree species.
5:14:08
Both of these data points indicate that forest regeneration is suffering in our natural areas.
5:14:13
The vast presence of vines is also a reflection of insufficient staffing to care for our forests.
5:14:18
With more permanent on the ground staff for forest care, NYC parks would better be able to manage this threat to our trees.
5:14:24
Again, while we are thankful to see the funding at least partially restored in the FY '20 '6 executive budget, we believe we should end the budget dance for our natural areas and parks once and for all.
5:14:34
We urgently ask for all one shot allocations to be made permanent to provide consistent year over year support for our city's precious and increasingly fragile natural areas.
5:14:43
The ability to have more dedicated full time staff for NYC Parks to care for our forests and wetlands would allow us to better protect what we have before they disappear from us forever.
