West Vil Pol Passes New Bill To Protect Big Apple's Big Trees

WEST VILLAGE, NY — City Hall has its own Lorax legislator.

A bill calling for the city to step up efforts to protect and expands the city's urban forest is now law.

The bill, introduced by Council Member Erik Bottcher, who represents the trees and humans of the West Village, Chelsea and Midtown, requires the city to create what he calls an Urban Forest Master Plan.

"The Urban Forest Master Plan will ensure a greener, more sustainable New York by expanding tree canopy coverage to 30% of the entire city," Bottcher said after his bill passed.

"Last week’s flooding showed us, once again, that we must take drastic action to increase the permeable surface area across our city, and that includes planting thousands of street trees," he added.

The plan would require the city to increase the tree and vegetation across the city and establish concrete goals to do so and would be updated every five years.

Additionally, the bill says the city must collect LIDaR data to monitor its effectiveness.

"Trees are an essential tool in combating climate change, cleaning our air, absorbing storm water and providing homes for wildlife," Bottcher said. "We must continue to do all we can to ensure more are planted and cared for as the vital pieces of infrastructure they are."

Bottcher has made more trees a crusade since he entered office last year. At the end of 2022, he made a goal to plant over 1,000 trees in the district.

In June, Bottcher announced that so far, over 400 new trees have been planted this year in his Council District.

"This puts us well on our way to surpassing out goal of 1,000 new street trees," Bottcher wrote on social media at the time.

Late last year, the city released a new interactive website for people to learn more about their leafy neighbors.

The interactive NYC Tree Map allows New Yorkers to poke around for information about the more than 800,000 landscaped trees in parks and on sidewalks across the five boroughs, including the benefits New Yorkers enjoy from each individual tree.