Sustainable Saratoga has reviewed and submitted comments on the City of Saratoga Springs’ draft Natural Resources Inventory. You can read our full comments, which include some important recommendations for improving the document in ways that will ensure greater protections for our natural resources, here.
The NRI will provide important assessments regarding the City’s remaining naturally occurring resources, such as forests and other ecological communities, open space, lakes, streams, wetlands, and springs.
We commend the members of the Open Space Advisory Committee, Tina Carton – Administrator of Parks, Open Lands, Historic Preservation and Sustainability for the City, and the NRI consultants for their work in developing an overview of the City’s natural resources and explaining their importance and value.
The NRI’s descriptions of current conditions of natural resources will provide information for making decisions to promote climate resilience, to protect our wetlands and other important water resources, and to reduce the risk of ecological damage and fragmentation of the City’s Greenbelt and other natural areas. As the population of Saratoga Springs continues to grow, these functions become increasingly critical and increasingly under threat of being diminished. It is imperative that we establish science-based protections for these natural resources, and the NRI is the first step in that process.
