Despite the Bronx being the “greenest” borough and home to the largest park in NYC (Pelham Bay Park), Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson wrote a letter to the mayor demanding more trees across the city.
“The city must commit to fully funding the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation with an investment of at least 1% of the City’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget to ensure the equitable and fair planting and maintenance of trees in all five boroughs,” Gibson wrote.
The letter highlighted the Urban Heat Island Effect, where temperatures in urban environments can be 10 to 20 degrees higher than in suburban and rural communities due to a lack of canopy coverage in densely built areas.
An estimated 350 New Yorkers die prematurely each year due to hot weather, according to the 2024 NYC Heat-Related Mortality report. These deaths are classified as either “heat-stress,” directly resulting from extreme heat, or “heat-exacerbated,” where high temperatures aggravate pre-existing illnesses. Intense heat combined with high humidity can be deadly for people with asthma, and the Bronx has the highest asthma hospitalization rate in the country.
In what can be considered environmental racism, the report also emphasized that Black New Yorkers are the most vulnerable demographic to heat-stress deaths, dying at twice the rate of white New Yorkers.
Several organizations signed Gibson’s letter, dated Jan. 17, including Friends of Pelham Bay Park, the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality, and the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance.
“We signed on because we do think it’s very important for this administration to fund our parks, and that’s been our challenge,” said Christina Taylor, deputy director of the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance. “Parks are not being funded at the level they should be, and in order to do this forest work and plant trees, we need funding.”
Trees have been a hot-button issue in the area. Developers at 355 W. 246th St. were accused by Community Board 8 of allegedly removing trees without a permit from the Special Natural Area District (SNAD), and recent construction along 239th Street in Kingsbridge resulted in the removal of a cottonwood tree that advocates had been trying to save since 2023.
Van Cortlandt Park also lost two large oak trees in a rash of fires during October and November’s drought watch. However, Taylor noted that because of weekly volunteer events like “Trail Work Thursdays” and “Forest Fridays,” the damage from the fires wasn’t as severe as it could have been.
To help recover from the damage, the alliance will be planting extensively in the spring, and anyone interested in volunteering can RSVP on the events page at vancortlandt.org.
“The urgency to increase our tree canopy coverage is at an all-time high,” Gibson wrote. “The time to act is now—lives are on the line.”
