On Monday, March 4, the Atlanta City Council passed a resolution (24-R-3186) to bolster the Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) by adding a natural areas team and a director of natural resources.
The resolution is seen as a step in the right direction for parks and natural areas advocates. Since 2020, 80 percent of land acquired as park space within the City of Atlanta is forested or a nature preserve, according to Park Pride. All the more reason specialists in the area of natural resources and land must be a part of the DPR going forward, said Michael Halicki, executive director of park-oriented nonprofit Park Pride.
Last year, park and natural resources advocates got a big win with the Park Improvement Fund being doubled. That money went towards maintaining the standard of good, quality parks, said Halicki. This year, he hopes that through advocacy efforts, more funds will be allocated to protect and maintain natural resources.
“We’re looking at the need to draw greater attention to our natural areas — our forested areas, our nature preserves — and begin to build an expanded natural areas team at the DPR,” Halicki said.
Park Pride and other advocates are hoping to influence the budget ahead of June when budgets for the DPR, along with other departments, will adopt their budgets, which officially go into effect in July.
In years past, Halicki said, he and others would show up at the public hearings held by the DPR and departments shortly ahead of the official adoption to advocate for their positions, only to find their input wouldn’t go very far as the budget was more-or-less already decided. That’s why advocacy efforts are starting early this year, ahead of even the preliminary budget release by the DPR.
With support from the city council, advocates are hoping this director role can be carved out and set a vision for the continually growing natural resources lands for years to come.
Atlanta ranked 28th out of 100 cities in the U.S. on the Trust for Public Land’s 2023 ParkScore ranking, which evaluates cities as they relate to 5 categories of an “excellent park system”: access, investment, acreage, amenities, and equity.
In 2021, Atlanta ranked 49th on that same ParkScore list — indicating that there has been definitive improvement. Still, more can be done, according to park advocates. An obvious area for improvement is ensuring the newly acquired natural area lands become easily accessible to communities that were previously in “park deserts,” or areas without easy, walkable access to parks.
Nearly 80 percent of Atlantans are within a 10-minute walk to a public park, according to the Trust for Public Land, meaning more than a fifth are not. Moreover, parks in neighborhoods of color are reported to have 7 percent less acreage than other parts of the city and 50 percent less than White neighborhoods.
Similarly, that same report says that “residents in low-income neighborhoods have access to 7 percent less park space per person than those in the average Atlanta neighborhood and 32 percent less than those in high-income neighborhoods.”
Acquiring lands for natural areas will be best served with a natural resources team and a director addressing equity, argues Halicki.
“I think we’re striving to become a world-class city as it relates to our parks; the City of Atlanta is known as the City in A Forest,” Halicki said. “I see a lot of times the conversation on trees on private land, and I think that’s an important part of the equation, but so too is making sure that we are being good stewards of the trees that we have on public land and masking sure that they are there to enjoy for generations to come.
The supporters of the Natural Areas team in the DPR plan to attend the next Community Development and Human Services meeting on March 12 to continue pushing for their cause.
Note: This article was edited to reflect a correction made from a previously misattributed agency to the Department of Parks and Recreation.
