[title]
Whenever New Yorkers hop the NJ transit to escape town for a weekend, they usually remark on a need to get back with nature. And while the city may be overwhelming, it turns out we're not doing too bad when it comes to fresh oxygen and trees. According to the NYC Parks Department's Treescount census, which sent volunteers to count trees in all five boroughs, the city has had a 12.5% spike in timber since the last count in 2006.
Thanks to planting projects like Michael Bloomberg's MillionTreesNYC Initiative and expedited forestry requests, NYC now has 666,134 trees, as opposed to 592,131 a decade ago. And, according to the survey, we could potentially have another 260,000 new arboreals in town by 2026. Looks like NYC parks are no small potatoes.
As for the borough breakdown, Queens took the cake with 242,407 trees, with Brooklyn lagging behind at 173,070. Though it has far fewer trees than Queens, Brooklyn did show a 21% growth over the decade, which is pretty astonishing. Staten Island, which packs foliage-heavy parks like the Greenbelt Nature Center, remained steady with 103,313 trees. The Bronx and Manhattan, which could both use more green, did show the most growth, with 39% and 29% increases, respectively.
So, while the city may soon become an underwater Russian kingdom managed by our orange president, we can at least take pride that NYC is greener than it's been in a long time.