Together, We Find a Way: New York Impact 2023

New York’s forests are vital in combating climate change—and we’re only just beginning to unlock their potential. We must massively augment reforestation to meet New York’s 2030 climate goals. This year, we launched a pilot project in the Finger Lakes, planting 1,800 trees—some on our land and some on that of partners. Our team is establishing key regional partnerships, including with Cornell University, to identify other lands across New York suitable for reforestation.

With your support, we are:

• Helping private landowners manage their forests. Working with the American Forest Foundation, we have designed our Family Forest Carbon Program to assist owners of woodlands as small as 30 acres get in implementing carbon-smart forest practices empowering them to address climate change while earning income from their land. We have identified over 85,000 qualified forest acres and enrolled 745 acres in New York’s Appalachian range into the program.

• Advancing Working Woodlands efforts. Our Working Woodlands program leverages the power of privately owned forests by helping landowners of at least 2,000 forested acres improve management of forests on their properties. Several projects in development in New York will help landowners manage their forests with climate-smart practices in return for management assistance that leads to revenue from the sale of carbon credits and forest products. 

New York’s lands and waters support job-creating industries and recreation, generate food, timber and other commodities, protect and provide clean water, mitigate climate change and create habitat for plants and wildlife. But our lands and waters are increasingly threatened by land conversion, invasive species and pollution.

We’re working with communities, landowners and all levels of government including federal, state and local agencies, to strategically protect and conserve valuable lands, utilize best management practices and employ innovative finance strategies to improve the carbon storage, soil health, wildlife habitat and water storage capacity of our forests and agricultural lands to benefit all of nature.

With your support, we are:

• Creating a resilient, connected network in the Appalachians. In this vast landscape, we are conserving critical lands and waterways—and New York plays an important role. By collaborating on connectivity, climate and community solutions, we can simultaneously conserve clean water and vital wildlife habitat, generate new job and recreational opportunities and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

• Leveraging conservation dollars for maximum impact. We established the Climate Resilience Grant Program, which awards grants to land trusts protecting land in the most critical areas for conservation and connectivity. In 2023, we awarded $550,000 in grants for 14 projects. Based on New York’s success, we are launching a regional grant program for the Northern Appalachians. 

• Reconnecting priority rivers and habitat. Barriers to fish migration like obsolete dams and culverts cut off fish from sizable portions of their habitat. Working with partners, we completed the three-year Boquet River Watershed Protection and Restoration Project to enhance the resilience of this key Adirondack watershed. 

Climate change makes devastating storms more frequent and intense. We are acting now to keep people out of harm’s way by working with New York communities to craft new, innovative solutions and partnerships to restore low-lying coastal habitats and help people seek safer ground. 

With your support, we are: 

• Preventing new development in floodplains. In New York, 60-80% of undeveloped lands prone to flooding are privately owned. As storms become more frequent and intense, keeping floodplains undeveloped, or natural, will help keep people safe, prevent loss of life and minimize damage to important infrastructure. 

• Helping residents voluntarily seek safer ground. We are helping New York State and New York City develop permanent, voluntary and proactive buyout programs that help families in low-lying and vulnerable areas move to safer places while restoring habitats, such as wetlands, that help protect communities from floods.

  • In the towns of Sidney, Edgemere, Olive and Brookhaven, we provided grants to local communities to create visions for repurposing vacant land after property buyouts occur. 
  • In Ulster County, we completed a proof-of-concept rental agreement that allowed an at-risk resident to have money for their next move while the lengthy buyout process closed.
  • In Piermont and Southold, we offered grant writing assistance to help communities access state and federal funding to adapt to a changing climate.  

To ease the effects of climate change, we are helping achieve New York State’s clean energy goals through careful energy siting. 

As we increase our renewable energy production in New York, we must minimize impacts on critical wildlife habitat and working lands. 

With your support, we are:

• Building partnerships to protect marine life. We’re working with other ocean experts to ensure that clean energy and habitat for marine life go hand in hand.

• Understanding implications of large-scale solar. As part of New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s Agricultural Technical Working Group, we helped inform NYSERDA’s report on the co-location of solar installation with agricultural operations (agrivoltaics). 

• Mitigating impacts of offshore wind development. We’re working with partners to ensure that offshore wind development is built in ways that avoid, minimize and mitigate impacts to vulnerable marine life and fisheries. Our team is exploring wind turbine structures that, if constructed the right way, will add valuable marine habitat at the base of the turbines.

• Studying seabirds for baseline data. We’re tagging northern gannets to understand the impacts of offshore wind development on birds.  This will provide science ahead of the anticipated rapid development of offshore wind energy generation off the coast. 

Trees are essential to our cities, cleaning our air and cooling our communities. Yet their benefits do not reach all New Yorkers equitably. To build a greener New York City, we first analyzed data to paint a picture of the current state of the urban forest—where it is and where it isn’t—to highlight where tree canopy could be expanded. While considering equity, justice, policy and funding, it became clear that not only should more trees be planted, but infrastructure, streetscape design and zoning may need to be redesigned to ensure equitable canopy coverage across the city.

With your support, we are:

• Advocating for key policy wins. With our leadership of the Forest for All NYC coalition and key role in the NYC Urban Forest Agenda, trees are now considered critical infrastructure and must be included in the city’s long-term sustainability and climate planning. NYC has set a goal of 30% canopy cover, with a focus on getting more trees in our most vulnerable neighborhoods.

• Hosting city-wide events. The second annual City of Forest Day was held in October. With over 70 events, including 30 geared toward children and programs in Mandarin, Bengali and Spanish, it was bigger and more inclusive than ever.

• Making voices heard. We’re building key public and private sector partnerships to help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change and access the benefits of nature. The Forest for All NYC coalition has grown to over 130 organizational members and has received public endorsement from all five borough presidents.

Our freshwaters are rich in biodiversity and crucial to life—but they are increasingly threatened in a climate-changing world. From Long Island’s aquifers to Lake Erie’s shores, we protect New York’s precious waters for all who rely on them.

With your support, we are: 

• Holistically promoting water quality in the Finger Lakes. Having mapped lands in the Owasco Lake watershed that, if conserved, would have the greatest benefits to water quality, we protected four properties and expect to close on two additional land deals in the coming months. In total, these six properties protect nearly 725 acres of wetland and forested habitat.

• Building local organizations’ capacity for change. We transferred 161 acres to the Owasco Lake Watershed Management Council, making it a land-holding entity for the first time. The property, now called the Fillmore Nature Preserve, is one of the most important areas in the entire watershed for keeping Owasco Lake clean.  

• Connecting homeowners to septic upgrade incentives on Long Island. We launched an effort on the North Shore of Long Island to help homeowners access public funds available to upgrade their septic systems and stop polluting nitrogen from entering our waters. We also reached thousands of residents on Long Island’s South Shore and connected them with Suffolk County’s Septic Improvement Program. 

The Nature Conservancy accelerates conservation across New York by securing hundreds of millions of dollars in new public funding for conservation and climate action, making our policy work one of the most effective conservation tools available to us.

We influence public policy and shape public funding to protect and restore our precious lands and waters, fight climate change, increase biodiversity and improve community resilience. Your support helps us leverage conservation dollars to make change to ensure a thriving future for all.

With your support, we are:

• Helping communities get much-needed funding. In December, Governor Hochul awarded the first $200 million from the $4.2 billion Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act to clean water projects across New York State. Along with funding from a second clean water program The Nature Conservancy supported creating in 2016, the $480 million in awarded projects will safeguard clean drinking water and aquatic wildlife while creating 24,000 jobs.
• Streamlining disbursement of funds. Unprecedented federal and state funding is now available for environmental and infrastructure projects in New York. To seize this critical moment, we are working with state and local officials to identify and overcome key pinch points that slow the distribution of public funding to communities. 
• Leading on-the-ground policy work and coalitions. We are building on our successful record of leading and supporting coalitions and campaigns, including a statewide goal to conserve 30 percent of New York’s land and water by 2030, new state protections for freshwater wetlands, the preservation of important landscapes in New York such as Plum Island, and $11 billion for environmental programs and clean water projects. 

As part of our commitment to equity, we are helping to create a more accessible outdoors. Through outreach, new partnerships and thoughtful changes to our preserves, we are welcoming more people to enjoy the great outdoors.

With your support, we are:

• Providing equitable access to our nature preserves. We’ve installed new trails, infrastructure and signage at our New York preserves to help more people connect with nature. Our updates to Wolf Swamp in Southampton—including a new boardwalk and more parking—opened to the public in the summer of 2023. We’re also improving trails at Moss Lake in Houghton and Uplands Farm Sanctuary in Cold Spring Harbor.

• Joining with volunteers to deepen our impact. On National Public Lands Day, Conservancy team members and participants from the mountain biking, hiking and trail running communities near Rochester and the Finger Lakes spent a half-day volunteering and touring the progress of the nearly complete 3.5 miles of our shared-use trail system at West Hill Preserve at an event organized by the Genesee Regional Off-Road Cyclists.

• Expanding educational programs and community outreach. We’re deepening our commitment to diverse communities with programs such as Black Dimensions in Art, with whom we offered an art and environment workshop for the second year. We also welcomed Hunters of Color to the Adirondacks, Hannacroix and Shelter Island. Our collaborative model of hosting Hunters of Color-mentored hunts held on conservation lands is now being replicated across the Conservancy.

The ocean covers more than 70% of the planet and contains over half the life on Earth. Habitats on New York’s coastline are critical for people and nature, providing services including seafood production, carbon sequestration and protecting coastal communities.

But the world is changing fast. Demand is growing for food, energy and water—and that means more pressure on the ocean and its resources. And climate change means hotter seas, more intense storms and more frequent flooding. We’re taking action to restore and protect the ocean’s health while accommodating increasing demands for seafood, shipping, energy and more.

With your support, we are:

• Reviving underwater meadows. As the climate changes, we are identifying which eelgrass populations are most resilient to heat stress and sharing our findings widely. We’re striving to reshape the way eelgrass restoration is approached not only on Long Island, but regionally and globally. 

• Celebrating landmark change for marine life. On Long Island, we’re honoring the 20th anniversary of conserving our 13,500-acre Bluepoints Preserve—ending a century of mechanical shellfish harvesting in Great South Bay and starting us on a path to restoring water quality. Since then, we’ve leveraged billions of federal, state and local dollars to replace septic systems and sewers with clean water technology in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

• Helping coastal economies thrive. Clams, oysters and bay scallops are not only economic pillars of Long Island’s coastal communities—these keystone species filter water and provide habitat for fish and invertebrates. We’re working with the NYS Shellfish Restoration Taskforce to develop a statewide shellfish restoration plan to help projects across New York succeed.

• Restoring salt marshes. Salt marshes protect our shorelines and provide habitat for marine life like diamondback terrapins, horseshoe crabs and a long list of fish, invertebrates and coastal birds. We’re working to restore natural water movement with innovative approaches with scalable potential well beyond New York’s borders.