A few weeks into the coronavirus pandemic, Steve Maing, his partner and their 2-year-old daughter, Rosie, discovered the spot that would make their life in locked-down New York bearable.
Steps from a busy street in Queens, a trail in Forest Park leads down through thick woods to a pond fringed with reeds. It used to be deserted most days, but now New Yorkers in search of uncrowded green space are venturing deeper and more often into the natural areas — forests, wetlands and grasslands — that make up a third of New York City’s parks.
“It’s like walking through a secret door,” Mr. Maing said one recent morning as he and Rosie watched a wading heron.
Across the country, park workers say that more and more visitors, restless from a spring spent mostly indoors, are exploring wilder segments of cities, like old-growth forest in the Bronx, a salt marsh in Manhattan and woodlands in Minneapolis and Baltimore.
But the rise in foot traffic is putting stress on both well-trodden parks and traditionally underused areas at a time when the economic impact of the pandemic is also threatening them. Budget cuts are chipping away at upkeep and educational programs, and park workers are wondering how long it will be before erosion, trash and neglect cause damage to ecosystems and landscapes that could take years to reverse.
Perhaps nowhere are these dynamics more evident than in New York City. Park advocates are delighted that new visitors are exploring tidal flats, ponds and forests, but dismayed that the wilder areas are disproportionately losing resources.
The city, which is mired in its worst economic crisis since the 1970s, slashed $84 million in parks funding in the yearly budget adopted this month, a cut of 14 percent from last year.
For natural areas alone, the budget eliminated 47 seasonal jobs added just last year — workers who were responsible for planting 30,000 plants, removing garbage and invasive species, and restoring trails. Also cut were 50 of the city’s 95 urban park rangers, who help visitors learn about and engage with natural areas.
“There’s a lot more space in the city than people realize,” said Sarah Charlop-Powers, executive director of the Natural Areas Conservancy, an organization that works with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation to care for 10,000 acres of natural areas and more than 300 miles of trails.
“We should be increasing the focus and resources for caring for and promoting the parks in general and the natural areas specifically as a healthy response to Covid-19,” she said. “Instead we’re going to have this sharp decline.”
Natural areas in the country’s 100 biggest cities cover more ground than Yellowstone National Park or all of Delaware, according to the conservancy, which recently surveyed organizations caring for natural areas in 12 of those cities, including New York.
More than 80 percent of those groups reported increased visits to natural areas after the pandemic hit their cities. Most of them said that cuts in city, state and private funding had already forced reductions in staff or programs.
In Austin, Texas, electronic counters recorded a 25 percent increase in walkers on trails around Lady Bird Lake in March, said Leslie Lilly, conservation director of the Trail Foundation, which maintains the area.
The jump was even more notable, Ms. Lilly said, given the cancellation of the South by Southwest festival, which usually brings a spike in visitors to the trails, and the implementation of rules requiring one-way foot traffic on some paths.
“People went to the green space that they know provides emotional, physical, mental support,” she said.
Cutting park budgets also raises racial and economic equity issues. In New York, where less than half of households own cars, around half of park users get their time in nature exclusively or primarily from city parks, a 2013 survey by the conservancy and the National Forest Service found.
“One of the misconceptions is that city parks are about fitness, hopscotch, basketball, and if you really want pristine experience in nature you get in a car and drive somewhere outside the city,” Ms. Charlop-Powers said.
One of the conservancy’s missions is to make urban natural areas welcoming for all by keeping them safe, mapped and maintained, and by sending the message that urban natural spaces are for people of all ages, physical abilities and backgrounds.
Gabriel Cummings, the conservancy’s citywide trails project coordinator, said that while some city dwellers may hear “trails” and think of “crunchy-granola types” on strenuous hikes, the paths also work for the walking, relaxing and contemplation many people do in parks.
“Call it strolling, or dog-walking,” he said. “This space is for all of us. Let’s just get out in the woods.”
The enthusiastic use of the 15 miles of trails in Forest Park in Queens was evident on a recent weekday morning.
As Mr. Cummings walked on a dirt path beneath a canopy of oaks, a shirtless, middle-aged man jogged up a hill carrying a watermelon-size boulder on his back. (“I have no idea what we just saw,” Mr. Cummings remarked.) A younger runner passed by in a turban and sweatsuit. An older man in a Mets cap trudged steadily with a cane.
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Before the pandemic, Mr. Cummings said, “You could spend a day working on a trail and maybe see one or two people. Now we might see a dozen or two.”
New wear and tear was evident. Mr. Cummings pointed out a makeshift shelter made of branches and recalled finding a sturdy gazebo with a porch, built of trees cut down nearby. And he identified places where feet had crushed vegetation or eroded earth along the trail.
Such impacts can disrupt forest growth and animal species, and — much like broken asphalt in a playground — give visitors an uneasy sense that an area is neglected.
During her childhood in the Bronx, Ms. Charlop-Powers said, wooded park areas were widely considered unsafe for recreation. Keeping trails orderly and holding programs wards off those dangers and perceptions, but takes money.
In another wooded part of Forest Park, a half-dozen small groups walked around Strack Pond, a glacier-carved depression known as a kettle pond.
“There’s nothing else to do,” said Jonathan Zhirzhan, 27, a carpenter from the adjacent Woodhaven section of Queens, who was walking with Juan Cisne, 29, a UPS driver.
The two men said they had been ranging far from their usual haunts, finding “new parks” — new to them, they meant — to relax and socialize in.
Javier Alvarez, 43, a teacher, and his wife, Melissa Marra-Alvarez, 40, a curator, were birding. They watched a pair of red-winged blackbirds peck at the knees of the heron, presumably, they explained, because it waded too close to their nest.
Up the hill, Tommy Kender, 72, collected trash in a plastic bag as a freelance volunteer, something he said he had done every day for years. But Yomeri Batista, 33, and her 5-year-old son, Jacob, had ventured to these woods for the first time. They were planting trees with a local pageant winner, Nalicia Ramdyal, 27, who wore her victory sash as they worked on a project she organized as New York’s candidate for Miss Earth USA.
Rosie, the toddler, was half-hidden in rushes, poking in the mud with a stick.
“She’ll go fishing for whales. She’ll say hi to the baby turtles,” her father, Mr. Maing, said.
“Especially right now with the lockdown and Black Lives Matter, it seems important as a New Yorker to stay in New York,” he said. “The only thing missing was exposure to really healthy natural environments, and here it is.”
Then in true New York fashion, he grew concerned that a mention in an article would blow the relative secret of the pond. “It’s hard to find a quiet place,” he said.
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