New York has over 1.7 million acres of land suitable for reforestation. It is time to reduce that number with native trees to help New Yorkers participate in maintaining the health of our ecosystem and ensuring long-term environmental and economic benefits.
A major obstacle to scaling reforestation is the limited commercial availability of native seeds, ecological challenges, and lack of accessible information.
Our teams goal was to turn the list into a digestable website designed to help create clearer demand signals for nurseries and support landscape-scale planting projects for land owners across New York.
Use this list alongside a strong site assessment and the best available seed provenance information. The ranking suggests how frequently species may appear across projects, but final choices still depend on region, landform, and site conditions.
Practitioners should evaluate site conditions carefully, consider genetic appropriateness, and use the list together with other reforestation best-practice guidance.
This homepage is a student-friendly summary view of the PDF: Collaborative Priority Species List for Reforestation in New York. For full methodology, criteria categories, and additional guidance, refer to the original document.
Please note that this is the first version of a New York priority reforestation species list. It should be adapted over time.