Exploring the Nature of New York seeks to provide New Yorkers with an ecological literacy of the city they live in; to share in the enhanced awareness of our city’s unique and valuable natural heritage - its animals, plants, natural areas and the services they provide to people.
Exploring the Nature of New York also hopes to engage New Yorkers in the challenges of our rapidly urbanizing world, its changing patterns of consumption, trade and ecosystem use and, ultimately, how these changes affect our immediate urban environment and health.
Exploring the Nature of New York provides users with the type of knowledge crucial to building and nurturing an ecologically sustainable future.
While Exploring the Nature of New York, remember that for the first time in history, more humans are living in cities than in rural areas on earth. Soon, more than 60% of the world population will be concentrated in large metropolitan areas. New York is no exception, with an expanding population of 8 million people living in the five boroughs and close to 20 million in the greater NYC region. This is not without consequence to the environment. NYC’s ongoing growth and development impacts its local ecology, its surviving urban wildlife, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and air quality. In fact, New York City is exerting more and more pressure on the entire planet; with the escalating demands of its population - for space, energy and food - extending throughout the globe. The emerging field of urban ecology seeks to understand these impacts and interactions, with the knowledge that the health of our immediate and global environment is crucial to our own welfare, and survival.
Exploring the Nature of New York was developed in collaboration with: