“As the city gets more and more crowded, we have these 10,000 acres that many New Yorkers don’t even know about,” said Sarah Charlop-Powers, the Natural Areas Conservancy’s executive director and co-founder. PhotoAll too often, Ebenezer Owusu does not get to relax at his neighborhood parks in the Bronx. He has to cram onto busy basketball courts and run laps around walkers and people riding bikes. These so-called natural areas lie within existing parks around the city, including Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay parks in the Bronx, Forest and Cunningham parks in Queens, Marine Park in Brooklyn and the Greenbelt on Staten Island. It has partnered with city park officials and other conservation and community groups to make improvements to hiking trails in some areas, including building wooden steps over muddy spots and covering informal paths cut by passers-by who have trampled over native plants.

Source: New York Times August 11, 2016 09:00 UTC