Episode 160 - John Thompson from CRISP (Catskill Regional Invasive Species Partnership)

[00:00:29] The bushwhacks were some of the worst days I've ever had in the mountains, or life really. Whereas Pantsy Mountain is totally opposite, it's a mountain on top of a crater. I think the weather challenges on this incident were particularly difficult. It is really the development of New York State. Catskills will respond to it.

[00:00:52] You've been listening to Inside The Line, the Catskill Mountains Podcast. Alright, so what do you do? Alright, so what do I do? I have been putting my beer in my insulated hiking boots. Jesus. That is the scariest. Go ahead. Did you do it?

[00:01:21] Oh nice. Alright, hold on. Nah, I didn't hear it probably. Sounds like a cider. It is. It's fantastic. We'll talk about it later. So, let's get down to the nitty gritty. Well, 160. Welcome to 160 of Inside The Line, the Catskill Mountains Podcast. Tonight, John from the Catskill Regional Invasive Species Partnership joins us tonight to talk about invasive species in the Catskills.

[00:01:51] And, you know, we have a lot of invasive species coming in. You know, different areas of here and there. We're not just talking about plants. We're talking about animals tonight as well. And we'll see what he has to say. And he has to say a lot. And it's fantastic. It's going to be a fantastic time talking about invasive species that we could help identify with them and to attack this problem that we're having in the Catskills.

[00:02:19] So, yeah. He's also going to bring up the topic of feral swine. Oh God, yeah. We'll cover feral swine and the Catskills. You'll want to stay tuned. It comes up later in the conversation. This scares me more than the freaking mountain lions. Damn, damn sure it does, man. They're smaller. They're faster. Yeah. That's why from now on, when you go hiking in the Catskills, you better bring a mountain lion with you. Yeah. In case you run into a feral swine.

[00:02:48] Just saying. That little snort there, those mountain lions will attack. Yeah. So, let's get on to the really nitty gritty. This is a while back. I don't know why I didn't receive this until now. The DEC is reporting slowly. So, on December 2nd, 2024, ECO police Wooden responded to a call to a motorist who reported seeing a deer laying on the ice in Spring Lake in the town of Delhi.

[00:03:16] Officer Wooden arrived at the location and observed the deer approximately 100 yards from the shore. The ECO determined that the ice was too thin to walk on and contacted local authorities to obtain resources directly to the animal. Now, this is where it gets good. Shortly after, a concerned citizen ran onto the ice with a snow tube from the other side of the lake.

[00:03:40] Officer Wooden instructed the individual to stop, but the person fell through the ice and clung to the snow tube in the frigid water. Wooden immediately contacted Delaware County Emergency Services and the new emergency. About the new emergency, the ECO, Delaware County Emergency Services personnel and local fire department members rescued the individual from the cold water and insured the safety before turning their attention back to the deer still on the ice.

[00:04:06] Wooden and local firefighters used a boat to successfully tow the animal to shore. Wow. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Delco. That's all I got to say is people that know up is Delco, the Delaware County. That is special. I wonder who that guy was with the inner tube. Yeah. And you know what? Once again, we'll talk about this next. New Hampshire loves to give out the name of people.

[00:04:36] They're like, hey, look at these people that got stuck on this mountain. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you want to shame them or not, but let's New York doesn't do that. Did you Google those guys? Did you Google any of them? I did. On the next thing? No. Yeah. Yeah. No, but that's, that's just amazing. The guy's like, like, hey, I see authority on the other side. Let me go save this deer. And then he falls. Yeah. I can't say I would do the same.

[00:05:03] It's, it's, you know, I, I have a, I have a big heart, but I wouldn't, I'd be like, if I knew the depth of the lake and stuff like that, and then it was a hundred yards from the shore. That's pretty far. What was he going to do when he got there? Yeah. Right. Right. Let me put you out of two. What if he hadn't fallen through and he gets all the way out there with this carrying this inner tube? Is there like some mystery that we don't know about deer and inner tubes? Is that like how you catch a deer?

[00:05:32] I don't know, but it was just like, what, what, what thought process went into that? Why did this person have an inner tube so handy? Right. And what was he exactly planning to do when he got there? Yeah. No idea. Don't have a clue. And then the, what, what is it? If he gets there, he's like, what do I do now? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like it's, it's, I saw this and I was just like, you gotta be kidding me.

[00:05:57] Like I, I, we saw the, the moose rescue and that was organized well and stuff. They, they broke a trench through the, the water. They pulled the, the moose out. They had rescue like a gear and stuff like that to, to help you with the cold in the water. But this guy is just like, Hey, I'll take this. I'm Superman falls through the ice and becomes the second victim. Yeah. Um, I was kind of expecting to find like somebody on the shoreline.

[00:06:27] The shore was set up. This was all staged and somebody was doing like a video of him to get it on social media. And that's why he was doing this, but I didn't see any of that. So Matt and Del high, Del high. We, we still have flip phones here. Well, not we, I'm not part of this. I'm oxy go County. So yeah. So, uh, God, I, I had, I had to bring that up, but you know, one of the, the big incidents

[00:06:51] that has happened within the past, uh, I would say like week or so was hold on. You go into the Franconia Ridge. Yes. Yes. So on Sunday, February 10th at 5 30 PM in New Hampshire conservation officers with New Hampshire fishing game were made aware of an SOS alert from the area of Mount Lincoln on the Pemmy Gosset loop.

[00:07:18] The rescue coordination center received a alert from a Garmin device with little information calls, uh, that were made to emergency contacts for the device who reported a group of three males who had intended a winter hike of the falling water bridal path loop. Now, if I am correct with this, this is a loop of like two peaks of New Hampshire that

[00:07:44] are above tree line, of course, a little bit like with the, with a good amount above tree line. So eventually it was learned that the group, they were experiencing whiteout conditioner and something cold related injuries, eventually stating through the next text that they needed help tracking on the device show that they were slowly moving towards the summit of Mount Lafayette. A, and a team of rescuers comprised of conservation offers and the volunteers with the Pemmy Valley search and rescue team responded to the trailhead.

[00:08:13] Now that was started at 5 30 PM. And at 7 30 PM, the first rescuers started up the old bridal path. So two hours that took for people to get together volunteers and personnel to get together to start up the draft. So once again, that makes you aware that it doesn't take 35 minutes for them to get up to you. It takes a while. So they started up the path, a slow descent of the Mount Lafayette towards the Greenleaf Hut.

[00:08:43] No more messages have been received from the groups that they experienced. It was, and explained that it was difficult to, to text message in the cold and wind at 9 10 PM. So four hours, almost four hours later. Uh, the first rescuers came in contact with the group just below the Greenleaf Hut, uh, on Mount Lafayette. That's the Greenleaf Hut is about mile, uh, west of Mount Lafayette, which is a pretty exposed summit. Uh, absolutely phenomenal place.

[00:09:12] I went there before Pemi Gosset Loop hike, beautiful place in the, in the summer winter. I don't know. Um, they were given additional light resources and some of their light sources that got dead and they started back towards a trailhead arriving without further incident at 10 20. So all in all, a almost five hour search and rescue mission. So the three were identified at 20 year old Jack, Tragney of Boston, 20 year old Justin

[00:09:38] Yang of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and 25 year old Vashnov Raja of Boston. All three had departed around 9 AM on the morning of the ninth and ascended falling waters trail to Fanconia Ridge. Wow. So they made it 9 AM to 5 30 PM. They were only up to Lincoln. Wow. I gotta admit that's a, like very slow progress across the ridges slowed by deep snow and wet

[00:10:07] out conditions, making the trail difficult to flow. But, uh, excuse me after going over Mount Lincoln, they felt turning back wasn't the prudent decision. So they continued on admittedly. They admittedly, they panicked and activated their SOS device, but they knew it would take hours for the rescue is to get to the destination. The group was fairly well prepared for full winter conditions, but lacked experience above tree line. This was a training hike for Mount Washington, which is now put on hold. Thank God.

[00:10:35] Uh, and they also had a hike safeguard. So good for them. Uh, they were appreciative in the rescue efforts and the quick response. Uh, once again, that the dedication with the volunteer, uh, groups of the Pemi Gosset search and rescue team and of the fishing game people, this would have not been possible. Unbelievable. Uh, once again, experience that they had, uh, over in New Hampshire. And it just, it, it gets crazier and crazier as time goes on over there.

[00:11:04] Do we, we, we, do you just think of the guys that Lee looked up and stuff? What do you got to say about that? Um, oh, you know, you might expect to have a few comments. Um, one of my more relevant comments is where it says no more messages had been received from the group as they had explained. It was difficult to text message in the cold and wind. So just, you know, try to imagine you're up there.

[00:11:30] It's at night in order for you, presumably to send a message on your in reach. You need to take your gloves off at least your thicker, warmer gloves and get down to a glove liner or something like that. You can work with your phone. So apparently it was so cold and windy. These guys had given up on messaging. Um, so just don't think that in any and all conditions, you're going to be using your messenger.

[00:11:56] The next thing is that with all the recent, uh, budget cuts, I noted that federal funding accounts for 24 to 50%, 56% of the New Hampshire fish and game department's budget, depending on the year and source of funds. So, um, thankfully this rescue effort had not been impacted by budget cuts.

[00:12:23] And then I went to the comments. Cause you pulled this up on Facebook. I do not cruise around on Facebook. Um, but I took this as an opportunity. And so some of these comments were just, were just, yeah, very harsh. You know, anybody who sets out to do this obviously, you know, didn't appreciate what they were

[00:12:50] getting into and didn't intend to have, you know, a few things go the wrong way for them. But you know, one of these, um, comments was Ivy league kids, not as smart as they thought they were in my opinion. I don't know. I didn't see that they were Ivy league kids, although they were from the Boston area. It's aimed. And you know, when they, their other online postings made them look like they were, you know, well groomed and.

[00:13:20] You know, uh, Jen, I'm going to call them conformists by their dress and apparel, but, uh, Ivy league. I don't know. Um, yeah. One, one person says, how about closing the trails in the winter? I, that's for Mark, Mark Bradford. So we're going to get Mark Bradford's home address and put it up on our Insta page. So everyone can send Mark hate mail.

[00:13:49] Okay. Close the trails in the winter. I don't think so. Mark. Yeah, it's it's, you know, and, and I, I don't think they have an Instagram for people to go crazy. So this is Facebook is, is a very good place for the fishing game too. They, they post stuff all the time. They, they do this stuff back and forth of kind of like acknowledging that they had a rescue, but these people were well-prepared and on. On, on, on like, you know, the crazy conditions that could happen.

[00:14:20] And this was, uh, an incident that you could have gotten above tree line and been like, screw this. This isn't worth it. But they had to summit Mount Lincoln and then go over to Lafayette, which is, I, I, I gotta admit, you know, when I did it in the Pemigosset loop, I went back up to Lafayette and then went over down to Lincoln and, uh, flume and Liberty. And I would thought it was a magical trail, but I'm like in the winter, this has gotta be absolutely insane.

[00:14:49] And, uh, apparently they didn't think about that. Yeah. You know, I don't know what the forecast was like that day. And if this was unexpected or foreseeable, um, you know, what other calamity of errors they ran into. They say they were well-prepared for winter conditions, but just because you have the right gear with you doesn't mean you know how to use it or even deploy it.

[00:15:13] Sometimes you see people, uh, doing gear changes where they're taking off a lot of gear to put on other gear and that's just gonna get them cold. But, um, thankfully these, these three fellows were rescued safely. One of the, one of the comments was from Dale rice. I hope you charge them.

[00:15:35] Dale apparently doesn't know or didn't see that they have a hike safe card, which in New Hampshire is kind of like your get out of jail free card. They weren't charged for it. Yeah. And so with, uh, you talk about the federal funds. So I know, I know this is a touchy topic and it's, it's been happening for the past week or two or so.

[00:15:59] Now there've been a lot of cuts to federal funds and forest and national parks and stuff like that. Now, do you think this is gonna have like this kind of an impact? Like, are we gonna see more of this now with a slower response time with volunteer areas? Like I, you know, I hate to put this on you, Ted, but I think this is a pretty big kick in the nuts to a bunch of places.

[00:16:26] Like, well, how, how forward do you want me to lean into this or should I keep the filters on? Because I do have an opinion on this. Oh, this is, I mean, this is why this is podcast is cause it's, it's no holds barred. Yeah. So I, I just, to point to a couple things.

[00:16:48] Number one, we had this significant solicitation for, uh, a substantial number of federal employees to hand in their resignation and take severance pay. And coincide coinciding with that was a number of, I'm not just gonna say significant budget cuts. It was like they were shutting down entire departments or agencies.

[00:17:15] So the two of those things occurring at the same time indicates to me a lack of coordination because you didn't know who was going to be accepting early retirement and severance pay. And you know, what would be leftover in a particular department or not would be trained, who would be untrained that we're getting rid of probationary people who would potentially fill the positions of the people that were retiring early. It seemed like it was not well thought out.

[00:17:42] And maybe there are certain areas of our government where you can go into, uh, downsizing or as I referred to it as defunding and such a substantial way like that. But when it comes to like emergency responders, like we saw a couple episodes with, uh, trooper horn and rusher, these guys, it's not like these guys are capable of doing what they do without a significant amount of training and preparation.

[00:18:12] And also having, you know, another one of them, just like them at the other end of the rope. So, you know, they're able to work with all the right safety protocols. You just can't get rid of half of the team and expect that team to do what they're used to doing and capable of doing.

[00:18:29] So, yeah, I would have a high level of concern that these budget cuts and defunding of government agencies, response teams, the national park service, et cetera, is going to lead to problems. So don't, don't expect that, you know, one hour to two hour to four hour response time, wherever it is, you are.

[00:18:58] I mean, this is, this is an issue. So, yeah. And, you know, we're speaking from our perspective as hikers, you know, like it's just, it's, it's, it's crazy times that we're living in, not just fricking the past fricking whatever. It's, it's been years upon years, the past goddamn 10 years. It's just what's, what's going to happen.

[00:19:25] And, you know, fricking prepare yourself for the worst. How about that? Like I did today up slide and I'll talk about that later. So, yeah. So skiing. So this has been a fantastic ski year. So, Ted, you can go a little bit on this cause you're a skier. So Jay Peak in Northern Vermont has seen more snow than Alta Peak and Jackson Hole in Wyoming. 334 inches of snow this season.

[00:19:55] Is that, is that good? Is that good? That's bad. What? I mean, that's freaking good. Of course. Yeah. That's a lot of snow. And I really, to put it in perspective is you need to understand the snow and the Rockies is a, is made up of a snowflake. That's of a higher dimensional proportion or a higher loft than the snowflake that we typically get on the East coast, which is a flatter flake.

[00:20:19] So you're going to get a lot more vertical accumulation of snow in the Rockies than you are going to get on the East coast, generally speaking, because you're dealing with bigger flakes. So for Jay Peak to be beating Alta and Jackson Hole is really impressive, but that doesn't mean that Mammoth Mountain hasn't gotten a mammoth amount of snow this season. Yeah, right. Right?

[00:20:47] So, but I'll also say, and this is candidly kind of hard for folks to believe these days, but when I grew up skiing in the heart of New York snow belt in the seventies, 300 inches of snow a season, that was about average for us. Yeah. We skied, we started skiing the week or so before Thanksgiving.

[00:21:11] We typically skied until late April, maybe early May, you know, every few years, but skiing mid November to late April was not uncommon. Wow. Yeah. Climate change, climate change. And, and the other thing that shuts down ski areas in this spring is insurance. Yeah. I was going to say, yep.

[00:21:39] That's one of their biggest, that's their biggest expense after they're done blowing snow at the end of, you know, snowmaking season. The next biggest expense is that insurance policy. Really? Yeah. Interesting. You know, it's just, it's just crazy to see. And I see all these videos of people up on a J peak and Killington and stuff, you know, uh, Mansfield, so, so people have been having some great powder on snow and stuff like that.

[00:22:08] It's just, it's good to see, you know, after all these years of people of just ice, just massive amounts of ice hitting the East coast and stuff. And now everybody out West is being like, you know, what is this ice we have? And, uh, no, I wouldn't say all out West, but a lot of the major resorts have like besides Utah and stuff like that have, have ice problems. And now we have the snow that we've finally have been waiting for, for years upon years. Yeah.

[00:22:37] Well, when's the last time you can say that you remember a winter in the Catskills where every weekend there has been snow on the ground? Well, every weekend that I've had to use snowshoes. Yeah. We, my first, um, hike with snowshoes in the Catskills this year was November 24th. I did Friday and awesome cap, and we had a ton of snow.

[00:23:04] It was actually the most snow fresh snow that I've hiked in this year was that weekend. And since then through the present, we've had snow on the ground. Every hike I've done. Nice. I can't say I remember that, you know, in the last eight or nine years that I've been hiking in the Catskills. Correct. Yeah. Same here. That's what winters are for. Exactly. And it's, and it's fantastic. It's good to see. I love seeing it. Uh, number, number one, the big reason it'll freaking kill the ticks.

[00:23:34] It's all I fucking want. I want these ticks to be eliminated. Well, I don't think, I don't think a super cold winter eliminates the ticks. I thought that's, that's what kills it though. No, they just, they just, you know, uh, in the winter is when they've laid their eggs in the fall. And now in the spring, the eggs or the, whatever it is that they regenerate by is going to hatch, spawn, whatever that scientific term is. And you'll have fresh ticks in the spring.

[00:24:02] Every spring there's a fresh batch of ticks. There is a fresh, but there's less with a colder winter. I don't know. We let's, we're going to, we're going to turn that over to AI Google and find that out. Chat GPT. Yeah. Whether that's a spot on or, or not, but I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't know. It'd be great to, you know, spend hiking in the summer of 2025 without ticks and without nettles. Yeah. Without worrying about fricking Lyme disease.

[00:24:33] Yeah. I'd rather have ticks than nettles because you can always, yeah, you can always spray for ticks, right? The nettles, I mean, they just suck no matter what you do. You can't spray yourself with like some anti-nettle something. You just, you know. True. But the nettles will go away after like an hour or something like that. A tick Lyme disease could last forever. Nettles going, I mean, man.

[00:24:59] You know, so long as you're hiking in them, they're just a pain. They're just a pain. You don't wear gators? I don't wear gators, but. Well, you, yeah, you can wear all that stuff hiking in the summer, but then what's the fun of hiking in the summer? If you're dressed like it's winter out with gators and long pants and long sleeve shirts and, you know. True. A hat with the net on it and all this. Yeah. Right. All this stuff. You know, you look like you're ready to go rob a bank, it seems.

[00:25:28] But, you know, I'd rather just in the summer. I'd like to hike like Moe in shorts and a pair of sandals. Yeah. Right. So. Yeah. That would be nice. So. So. Um. To move on to the next topic. Uh. The New York City DEP infuses 165 million into nine Hudson Valley and Catskills counties.

[00:25:51] Ted, can you take a guess of where these counties are located and what significance they have to New York State? Well, all those counties are part of the, uh, the watershed that feeds the reservoirs owned by the city of New York. Correct. Wow. Wow. Guest, right? I'm looking at the map. So. Yeah.

[00:26:15] It's, I mean, so these payments covered taxes over, uh, 230,000 acres of land, including reservoirs, dams, and other water supply infrastructure, as well as public recreational areas and agricultural properties. TEP maintains a several, or maintains a significant presence in the region, employing over 1,000 individuals who live and work within these communities. Uh.

[00:26:40] Now, once again, this was distributed over nine, or nine counties, wasn't it? Sorry. Nine Hudson Valley and community counties in 2024. So they paid for taxes amongst these areas. So. Ted, you want to go on with this one? Uh, about. The DEP.

[00:27:03] So basically all of this property that's owned by the city of New York is taxed at allegedly its fair market value. And so the city of New York in 2024 paid $165 million to the towns, counties, school districts, and other local municipalities that, uh, are in the places where they own the properties.

[00:27:33] So this, in my view, this provides a lot of economic stability to these areas because unlike a private landowner who may or may not pay their taxes when they're due. And in some instances, you'll have people that don't pay their taxes for up to two or three years for whatever reason before a tax foreclosure proceeding is started.

[00:27:55] The city of New York probably pays its taxes every year to avoid the penalties that would come due. So I just took two instances of the towns where the city of New York pays taxes to and compared it to the town budget. So in the town of NeverSync, the city pays $3.8 million in taxes.

[00:28:26] Town budget is 5.7 million. So that is a very large percentage of the town budget. Yeah. The 3.8 million that goes to, that's paid in by the city. Now, maybe some of that money that's paid in by the city goes towards the county budget. I didn't know whether or not they gave that breakdown or not, but even still, that's a lot of the town budget.

[00:28:55] Then I also looked at Olive where DEP pays $2 million in annual taxes and that town budget is $5.2 million. So that's like a big revenue stream coming into those local municipalities that they can count on year in, year out to fund their budget. So, Ted, explain this to me like I was five.

[00:29:24] Well, that's easy, Stosh, because I always explain stuff to you like your five. So we're talking about New York State covers $3.8 million of the taxes in NeverSync. So it's not New York State, it's New York City covers. New York City. Okay. Yes. Pays us in. So what is that? Is that only the area that is owned by DEP? Correct. Okay.

[00:29:55] Okay. So like regular people will have to pay their taxes and they just, okay. Yeah. So now the gripe would be if you're the town of NeverSync, while it's nice to get $3.8 million in 2024 for your state or your town tax budget and your county taxes in NeverSync, the problem is, is for the most part that's undeveloped land.

[00:30:21] And so if you were the town of NeverSync, you would be saying, well, if that land was developed with cabins and second homes and golf courses and hotels, we would be collecting more money in taxes for those properties, which makes sense. But then on the other hand, the more development you have and the more people you have, the more needs you have for town resources.

[00:30:50] You know, you're going to need some more police officers.

[00:31:21] You'll probably have to meet.

[00:31:53] You'll probably have to meet some of the prior years and maybe figure out X percentage pay. But I think it just creates, you know, a sense of uncertainty for the town. So having that steady stream of money coming in from the city without an increase in the demand for local services, I think that's desirable.

[00:32:12] And the other thing is you find downstate, the biggest bitch where I live is they don't want people from New York and New Jersey coming up here and suburbanizing our rural community. So the locals around where I live, they don't want development. But then when you go to an area in the Catskills where development can't happen because the city owns all the land, everybody complains that they can't have development.

[00:32:41] And they want their taxes lowered because development. Yeah, yeah. So it's all a cluster. Yeah. It just means people need to go hiking more. Yeah, right. Just get out. One question that I have, Ted, I don't know if you know this or not. I noticed like a lot with the different counties that the budget is absolutely astronomical with different areas.

[00:33:06] Like the town of Neversink, you know, you said had $3.8 million. But then and that was 80 or 170. That's 3.8 comes in from the city. Okay. The budget is 5.7 for the town of Neversink. So why is like, you know, Hunter has 80 parcels with $179,000? Like it's just so- In tax revenue?

[00:33:34] Well, so in Hunter, there's no reservoir in Hunter. Okay. So they look at not only the raw land, but what is the use of the land? What improvements? So when you have the reservoir, you have all the reservoir structures, which adds value to the land. Okay. The tax rateable goes up. And that's where the municipalities have their bitch is if I have a raw field with no improvements on it, then I'm just taxed on the raw value of that land.

[00:34:04] And my assessed valuation might be $100,000 for my vacant land. And then when I sell it to you and you build the Russin Mahal on it, you know, 20,000 square feet, 20 bedrooms, 40 bathrooms, 80 car garage. That's like a $10 million structure that you just built on, you know, my little old farm lot. So now your taxes go up because of, you know, you're taxed on the improvements.

[00:34:35] They call them ratables. So towns, on the one hand, they like that because it generates more money for them. But like I said, instead of you building your 20,000 square foot Russin Mahal on it, I sell it to Joe Developer that's going to put 500 townhouses on it. And those townhouses are all going to be inhabited by young families with 2.3 children that now go to the school district.

[00:35:04] And so we have to bus those kids. They go to school. Taxes go up. Yeah, we need recreation for them. And, you know, you're going to arguably increase the level of crime, yada, yada, yada. So the next thing you know, with all that increase in your population, you have more services you need to provide.

[00:35:26] Your budget's going to go up disproportionately to just putting the Russin Mahal on it or putting a reservoir on it. Or, you know, DEP, one of those. You ever see the vents they have for the water aqueducts? Yes. Yeah. Like Shaft Road is called Shaft Road because there's a vent shaft over there.

[00:35:51] So, you know, that's a rateable for taxing, but it's not a significant rateable. So, I mean, there's arguments either way. The fact of the matter is that all of us who don't live there like it because it makes for great hiking terrain. It's all protected. Yeah. I just wanted to bring that up. I thought it was pretty interesting stuff. It's a lot of money, $165 million. Yeah.

[00:36:20] And maybe I'll post that in the show notes to see if you want to break down the county and town as well. It's pretty cool to see. Yeah. And it's interesting to think about it. It is a lot. A lot of money. Jesus. Just to think about that, that one freaking baseball player gets more than that. Wow. Unbelievable. That's over like a five or 10 year contract. That's not just in one year. That's still sad. Yeah.

[00:36:51] So, wanted to chat about something. DEC releases hunting safety stats for 2024. This was interesting. So, the DEC documented 11 HRSI, so hunting related shooting incidents in 2024, including four two-party firearm incidents and seven self-destructive inflicting incidents. And unfortunately, one of those incidents was a self-inflicted fatality.

[00:37:16] So, 11, one was a safe, self-inflicted fatality. So, basically, let's see. So, two-party firearms. So, they shot each other once or twice. They shot each other. And then the other ones were basically self-inflicted. So, they shot themselves. Unbelievable. Two incidents involved individuals who were not legally hunting. So, they also documented 11 elevated hunting incidents.

[00:37:46] So, EHIs in 2024. Though, all not falls were reported. So, these elevated hunting incidents are, of course, above ground. They're up in trees, tree stands, stuff like that. So, nine of involved hunters falling to where a safety or failing to where the safety harness are falling to connected a safety harness to a tree. Two of the falls were fatal. So, 11 shooting incidents and 11 fall incidents.

[00:38:15] Yet, the fall incidents were more fatal. There were two. Other resulted in serious incidents. All incidents could have been prevented for the proper use of fall arrest harnesses systems that remain connected to the tree. Now, I am not a hunter, but I have never heard of a fall arrest harness. And I don't think I know anybody would ever wear those. Right?

[00:38:45] Yeah. Well, first of all, they need to come in camo because if it's not camo, a hunter is not wearing it. Right? Yeah. It's, I've never had a friend that would be like, hey, I wore, I have a tree stand and I wore a fall like harness. Like, I've never. I just Googled this. You can get the hunter safety ultra light harness for $120 at Bass Pro Shops.

[00:39:14] Or you can get the muddy outdoors harness for $31.18 available at, take a guess, Dosh. Walmart. Yes. Walmart. Yep. You got that right. So, yeah. Well, hey. Yeah. So, I guess they sell them. You know, should they, should it come with your trees? I mean, we're assuming these guys are in tree stands or gals when this happens.

[00:39:40] It makes sense to wear the harness, particularly like if you're leaning forward, trying to get a better angle on the shot and trying to follow the deer if it's running in front of you or something. And next thing you know, you lose your balance, you lose your footing. It would make sense to have a harness on.

[00:40:00] I just wonder if you, when you buy a tree stand, if it comes with the harness is maybe if it doesn't, these hunters aren't thinking that they need a harness when they climb up in the tree. So, when I, when I read this, one of the things that stood out to me was the average age of an injured hunter, whether by falling out of a tree or tree stand or getting shot while hunting.

[00:40:30] You know what the average age was? I'm going to take a big wild guess, 32 years old. 43. Oh my God. No way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You would think somebody in their forties would know better. You know, this is like, you would expect the, like the 20 some year old kids who got almost stranded up in the whites, right? The Ivy league kids. You would think that the hunters that shoot themselves would be in their twenties as well, but apparently hunters in their forties aren't doing so well.

[00:40:59] After hunting for 20 years, they forget how to, oh, shoot my foot. Yeah. And then they fall out of the tree. So, the other thing is, have you ever, have you ever, when you were bushwhacking in the Catskills, come across the tree stand? Of course. Yeah. I mean, the, the, the, the Catterskill high peak areas is phenomenal area full of freaking Tatterskill. Tatterskill. Tree stand. Huh. I haven't seen one over there. I've seen them, um, elsewhere. Big Indian and fur, I'm guessing.

[00:41:29] Uh, I, well, actually I found a, there's a little campsite on your way up to fur. I found, um, that's, you know, got a lot of gear there. And then I've found, I'm going to say there's four tree stands that I've come across in my Catskill hikes. One of them, and I think I was on the show when I reported this, um, one of them is beyond the

[00:41:54] headwaters of the East branch of the never sink on one of the Eastern slopes or Southern slopes of slide mountain. Who the fuck would put a tree deer stand all the way up there? Right. And then when you, you shoot your deer, I mean, packing out the meat, the carcass, the whatever. Six miles. Yeah. That's a long haul, man. What are you going to build a raft and float it down?

[00:42:22] The never sink is that you wait for high water and drones. Maybe that's what you do. Like this guy earlier with the inner tube, trying to rescue the deer in the water. That's what you do is you float it down the never sink on inner tubes. But oh, well, good for him. Yeah. That supplies his family for a full year. Yeah. Jesus. That's so good. Jesus. Yeah. I can, when I, when I come across that stuff, some, some parts, I'm just like, are you kidding me? Like out here?

[00:42:50] Like, you know, I've come across, uh, on some parts of a blackhead on like we're talking about to the East, not even to, to the, the, the, the, the, the, the areas of, of, of like blackhead black dome stuff, but to the East of where I was just like, how the hell did they get shit up here this far, even going up to the summit and then down or to the base of like the Hudson Valley and up?

[00:43:17] I'm like, this is just, this is not like feasible to bring all this stuff up there to kill one deer and to haul it down. And the crazy thing is how often do you see deer when you're out hiking? Right. Fucking never. Yeah. Especially in those spots, you don't see deer. Right. Like good, good point. Like I freaking, I've seen more deer down in the Shenandoah mountains, uh, within a 25 minute period than I have in the Catskills when I've hiked.

[00:43:46] You, if you ever wanted to go deer hunting, you can hang out in my backyard by the pool, have an, uh, hard cider, just, just wait till they come. The herd comes strolling through twice a day. You can have your pick. Yeah. I don't want you shooting my deer. I'm just kidding. I'm good. They're, they're, they're cute. Sometimes my wife, yeah, I think my wife has names for them all. Oh God. She won't admit it, but I, I think that's, that's going on. So, uh, outrageous.

[00:44:16] All right. So thank you to the monthly supporters, Chris Kirby and Jeff Jotz, Desert City Radio, Mikey S, John Comiskey, Vicky Ferrer, Summit Seekers, Betsy A, Denise, Tom, Vanessa, and Derek. Thank you guys very much for supporting the show. Really appreciate it. Also want to appreciate the sponsors for the show. So Outdoor Chronicles Photography capture a love story against breathtaking backdrops with Outdoor Chronicles Photography.

[00:44:42] Molly specializes in adventure elopement and a special couple photography, and she'll immortalize your moments amidst the stunning landscapes of the Catskills, Adirondacks, and White Mountains. She'll craft timely images and reflect unique bond in nature's grandeur. Embark on an unforgettable photographic journey with Outdoor Chronicles Photography. Don't hesitate to get a hold of Molly on all platforms. Also, discover the wilderness with Trailbound Project.

[00:45:09] Our expert-led hiking and backpacking education programs offer to a parallel outdoor experiences. Whether you're a beginner or seasoned adventurer, join us to learn essential skills to explore stunning trails and connect with nature. Start your journey today with Trailbound Project to unlock the wonders of the great outdoors. Of course. So, no hard-ciders or donations yet. So, once again, you can donate a hard-cider to the show, and this will go straight to the Catskills now.

[00:45:39] Buy me a coffee. Buy me a hard-cider, basically. Does that mean we're going to run out of money? No, no, no. The sponsors... How are we going to keep the lights on if we don't have donations? Donations. And the supporters of the show are doing really well. Actually, I have a great idea for our next sponsor, Heart of the Catskills. They have a little business proposition to do where we can support Heart of the Catskills, which is Humane Society, and I think it would be a great idea.

[00:46:10] So, check that out. So, next, Who's Outdoors? Who's Outdoors? How did this segment get that name, Stosh? So, Tom Who's from Who's Outdoors. Mention the podcast in one of your heights through social media, and we'll chat about it in the show. So, I don't know if she listens to this. So, I saw Sue at my job. Sue Hall completed her 420 grid. I don't know if she listens to this, but congratulations on completing your 420 grid.

[00:46:40] Phenomenal accomplishment. Yeah. Is that her first grid, or I thought she had already done a grid. I think that's her first. Okay. She's on to do probably like 300 more. It's pretty crazy. She's crazy. I've only run into her one time out on the trail. I think the same. Yeah, it was on Wittenberg. She's pretty intense. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:03] So, also, Darren and his son Alex, Darren White, did Balsam Lake Mountain before the storm kit. They said it was fun. On Saturday? Yeah. Okay. And they met Julie and everybody up atop that they had that little festival with. So, they said it was a great time. Fantastic before the storm. So, who do is outdoors? Also, did Mudder Milk and Spray Falls in the Delaware Water Gap? That looks like a phenomenal time.

[00:47:32] I got to admit, Tom had probably a good time out there in the Delaware Water Gap. Yeah. Those were some nice photos. Tom takes some nice shots and he makes the Delaware Water Gap look really, really beautiful. It looks like it makes it look exotic. All right. So, Denise, also, she is a supporter of the show. Completed her Winter 3500. So, congratulations, Denise. Really appreciate you supporting the show and hopefully you still listen to the show.

[00:48:01] So, she did her Winter 3500. I'm on my way, even though I didn't do mine this week. But, Beyond Blazes, Joanne, a.k.a. Joanne, was up in the Adirondacks and did Bitslide. She was listening to our episode on the way up and she got her second doubts of doing hiking in the winter. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I was just like, we didn't mean to do that. Like, what? It was all the...

[00:48:30] Was that the Mount Washington rescue? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She was having her doubts, but she killed it. So, yeah. Looks like they had nice weather. She said she was over. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She said she was over prepared. I'm like, that's the only way to go. Yeah. That's what winter hiking is. It's, you know, carrying around all this stuff that you hope you never need. Exactly. And that's why I was just like, good job. Well, dude, that's where you should do it. Also, rate the show. Go on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever.

[00:49:00] Rate the show. Five stars as of what we only accept. Please. Apparently, you know what the good thing is? Apparently, someone who didn't like the intro took that down. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I don't see that anymore. So, I mean, the intro is still there. It is there. It's... I'm sorry to say it's not what Tad is, but what I am. I don't know what he listens to. Yeah. Grateful Dead. Yeah. No. I listened to... It was very popular in the 60s.

[00:49:28] The Lawrence Welch Orchestra. It's very nice, mellow music. There's no singing. You know, it's quite a big ensemble. So... Drugs. Yeah, I really dig that. All right. I don't listen to music. I don't believe in rock and roll, dancing, having fun. None of that. Jesus. All right. You're out of here. Life is serious business. Life is meant to be taken seriously.

[00:49:59] And... Idle time is wasted time. So, what are you having to drink? Uh... I just kicked back a... I'm going to call it a no-name pale ale. It was so uninspiring. Their brand deserves no recognition. 4.4% alcohol. It was... It had no bite or bitter to it. I don't know. Maybe it was an old beer. It got stale. So...

[00:50:28] I'm disappointed. I mean, it was so bad, Stosh. I'm thinking that we need a redo. We need to just hit the erase button and start recording fresh. I'll get a new beer, and that'll make everything better. No? Yeah, I gotta wake up at 4 o'clock, so... All right. So... So, I am having a Down East Hard Cider. I think it's a pumpkin blend. I'm finishing this up from Vermont that I got there.

[00:50:58] Unfiltered. Down East Hard Cider. Beautiful. Delicious. So, when it's unfiltered, does that mean it has, like, worm parts in it? I don't know. I mean... The one thing that I love about this Hard Cider is that it has stuff that you have to drink up... Or you read upside down because it tells you that you should drink it upside down and read it. So, that means you gotta chuck it. But... Good stuff. Absolutely phenomenal stuff. Down East Hard Cider. So, previous hikes.

[00:51:29] What do you want? You want me to go first? You? Yeah. I mean, I see you got all these little notes going on here. All these details. Let's see how nice you make your report, given all the information you have written down. So, today, you know, I could have crossed off another of my 3,500 list, but I was just like... I don't want to... The stuff I have left, I don't want to break trail by myself. I don't want to do by myself. I got a bunch of hard stuff.

[00:51:57] Lone Rocky for Big Indian. Wittenborg Cornell. Stuff like that. Like, it's gonna be pain in the ass to break trail. So, I was like... Huh. Slide is easy. I could break trail up slide. The viewpoint is phenomenal. Usually, 90% of the time, slide has snow at the top. So, you can get that awesome winter effect up top. And on my way there, I was just like...

[00:52:24] Of course, Jessica was just like, you know, it's gonna be very cold. Blah, blah, blah. I was like, yeah, whatever. I'm going. I went up. And on my way there, I was just like, man, the winds have been pretty crazy. I highly doubt that I will get the snow lingering effect on the balsams up top. But I eventually did. But when I arrived at the trailhead, Panther Mountain was not plowed out at the time. But someone did make their own way in. It was pretty cool.

[00:52:53] Like, it looked like they made their own slot in there and they parked in there. So, they eventually plowed it out later. Slide was plowed out. And then they eventually plowed it again after I was there, after I came down. So, I started off at the trailhead at 8 degrees. And I calculated everything with a windchill calculator. Because windchill calculation is absolutely insane. I forgot what they said it was. It was like, for every mile per hour is like 1.27 watts per meter.

[00:53:22] It's absolutely insane to do a windchill calculator. So, 8 degrees at the trailhead with 5 mile per hour constant winds was negative 1 degrees at the trailhead. As I started, I started off with snowshoes. And I was just like, it's going to be a nice, like, you know, there'll be drifts here and there. To be honest, I could have probably just went with spikes the whole time. Because the trench was nice and deep.

[00:53:50] And the drifts weren't that bad. I got to admit, there were drifts here and there. It was nice to wear snowshoes for the whole grip. But I could have not worn them. It was just, I felt badass, I guess. Just to wear them. And it was, once again, a beautiful. No post holes throughout the whole freaking hike. Maybe here and there. I filled them in from here and there.

[00:54:12] It was just, I was actually surprised with how much, like, how many people go up there with the amount of post holes there weren't. And it was just, it was nice. Once I got to the 3,500 foot sign is where it got really cool. Like, and I mean, literally. You start turning kind of like east on slide. And you hit like a call between, I think it's little slide in and slide.

[00:54:40] And the wind just stays constant. It was a constant 10 miles per hour. So, once again, if my calculators were correct and it was like zero degrees because I was 1,300 feet higher, it would make it negative 15 degrees constant. So, there were gusts here and there. Probably 20 to 30 miles per hour. The trees were shaking. I heard a lot of cranking here and there. And that would make it a negative 26 degrees.

[00:55:08] And as I got up higher, the wind stayed a little bit more constant. And it was colder, I would feel, because, you know, I was moving. But, you know, down below, I had to shed a layer within the first quarter of a mile because I was just too hot. And then up top, I was just like, I don't know if I should put out a layer because it's going to get wet when I go down. But I summited. I went down to the viewpoint, took a lot of pictures.

[00:55:36] But at the summit, I would say that it was a constant 15 miles per hour, which would say that it would be a constant negative 19 degrees at the summit. And I lingered around for like a minute and then I head down. I, to be honest, I was like, I was like you, Ted. I didn't even have my lunch. I just flew down the mountain because I was, I was just, my hands were getting a little cold.

[00:56:00] I had everything and everything that I was ready to be successful with this hike. And I felt very, I was warm. I was nice. On the way down, I did have to like take my hands out of my, my, the fingers, parts of my gloves and to kind of tuck them into my, my knuckles and stuff like that. Or my, my parts of my hands to get them warmed up. But other than that, absolutely beautiful day of clouds and blue skies.

[00:56:29] And then once you get up above those balsams, there was thick, massive thick ice from that rainstorm, sleet, snowstorm that was pulling down these trees. And, uh, only two blow downs on the way up. But that trench was solid freaking concrete all the way up. You could see the drifts, but they didn't affect the trench. And it was just absolutely magical day. And so you were on the Jeep trail the whole way. Yeah.

[00:56:56] I was, you know, I thought about going, I saw the Curtis Olmes retrial and I was just like, it wasn't broken out. It looked like somebody took like 20 steps and then turned around. Oh yeah. I thought about it so bad. I did. Yeah. I was, I was almost going to swing by there yesterday, but. Ah. I had work related activities to attend to. If you did, I would have went, I would have went. Oh yeah. I should have, I should have went, to be honest, I should have went down it.

[00:57:25] And it would have been easier breaking trail going down it. Yeah. But then you would have that, that stretch at the bottom and that may or may not have been broken out. But you know, breaking trail really isn't all that bad. You just go slower. Yeah. You have to, you know, account for it in terms of time, you know, and what time you're going to finish and daylight hours. Yeah. So.

[00:57:45] So, but that just, I just got to admit, I, once again, those, those days of like the, the, the weather of the extreme weather was just, I just love those days. And as I got higher and higher, 3,500 feet, it seemed like this, where the, the wind started staying more constant. And I had below that. I had my, my Heli Henson jacket. My, my, my shell wasn't up like the full.

[00:58:13] Well, the hood wasn't up. But after that, because of the constant wind, I had to put it up to block my face. And then I realized when I got back down to the bottom, even though I had that full wind up, it was just the part of my face below my sunglasses and my beard. My, well, my, whatever you call that thing was windburned. I actually had windburned from, from that day. Yeah. I was going to ask you with how cold it was in the wind.

[00:58:39] And if you were having any issues with your exposed skin. Yeah, I did. And I was just, I was surprised. I was like, it's the first ever time that I've had wind burned in the Catskills. And it was, you know, only person, I was seriously, I've never, I haven't, I didn't see anybody else. It looked like one person did the trail before me and they had spikes on. Yeah. And that was the day before President's Day, which I was like, wow, President's Day, everybody has that day off. Like, why isn't, like, there's so many people up here.

[00:59:09] But one person went up and went down and that's all I saw. No hardcore break and trial to where I was like dying or anything like that. And the view was absolutely phenomenal. Man, what a day. I just love those extreme, once again, like, I had my base layer of pants on and then I had a layer over top of that.

[00:59:32] I have my merino wool shirt, a long sleeve shirt, and then my Heli Hansen jacket and that's it. Well, I have to say, some people don't hike in conditions like that with their snowshoes. When, if you have those heel risers, the televators on your snowshoes, it does make going uphill that much easier. It did. It did. I will admit, I did use them for most of the way up.

[01:00:01] And then once you get to the flat part after what I call the tunnel, I just kicked them down and then I flew down the mountain. Like, it's, I know I'm not going for fastest known time, but I think it was an hour and 45 minutes up and then like 40 minutes down. Yep. Good. And then I saw, it was pretty cool to see, once again, that trail's really wide. I think I saw people took sleds down. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[01:00:28] So, did you see any feral swine when you were up there? No. They must have been hibernating. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think they come out in the, as much fat that they have on them, I still don't think they come out in the winter all that much. No, I wouldn't think so. We'll find out later tonight when and if that happens in the Catskills, this invasive feral swine. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:00:51] So, one thing I want to do, point out that last night, I had a crazy dream about climbing up, I'm going to go quotations, bear pen. So, I had a dream of that I was climbing up bear pen and then all of a sudden I was hitting these like 200 foot cliffs. Mm-hmm. I guess so.

[01:01:19] There were just, there were just a bunch of graves and then a huge city and then off to- A huge city on the top of bear pen. Bear pen. Okay. Is that after you walk through the grave field, the cemetery or before? Okay. Yeah. And then I don't go- All right. So, we have a series of 200 foot cliffs, the graveyard, and the huge city. All right. Continue, Stosh. Continue. And then I turn- Sit back on the couch, sit back on the couch and tell us more about this dream.

[01:01:46] I turn around and then all of a sudden there's like 14,000 foot mountains with snow covered on them. And then like I'm walking through like a massive city ghetto and I'm just like, what the hell is going on here? And I'm just like, this isn't bear pen. And then I woke up. Well, it's glad to see that you enjoyed those wild mushrooms I got you for Christmas. Yeah. I took them before bed. Thanks a lot. They actually made me sleep really well. So, that's very cool. So, what'd you do?

[01:02:16] Uh, I went out on Saturday and I hiked the Eastern for the Devil's Path. It's a fun hike any time of year, particularly when it's not hot and humid. I think it's a great hike to do in the winter, especially with all of the dense snow that we've accumulated in the Catskills this winter. Because it really just levels out. It's a great hike.

[01:02:45] It's a great hike. It's a great hike. I only remember one other time that I've hiked the Eastern for in the winter with as little ice as we had this past weekend.

[01:03:12] So, we set out from 214, hike back to the East over, you know, Plateau, Sugarloaf, Twin, and Indian Head. Along the way, coming down, I guess it was Sugarloaf. Um, no. Coming down, yeah. Coming down, Panther. I found a pair. Panther what? Or not Panther, Plateau. I found a pair of, um, uh, Loveliners. And so, Danny put them in my pack.

[01:03:41] We continued on, and eventually we ran into these two guys, Jake. And I forget the name of his pale, but, uh, Jake works at Jesse's in Tannersville, at the bar in Tannersville. And it turns out that they were his glove liners. Oh, nice. So, yeah. So, I returned his glove liners to him, whereupon he said he would buy me a drink if I came by the bar later that night.

[01:04:07] And I said, if you, you know, based upon these being Patagonia glove liners, it's going to cost you more than a drink, Jesse. But I wasn't in Tannersville later on to get my free drinks from Jake. So, at any rate, we continued on, and it was just, you know, a fun hike. We ran into this fellow, Tim. Tim was a Brit, and in the States, about 27 years, he said he is an RFD engineer.

[01:04:36] Radio frequency direction engineer. Engineer. And he does work for the NFL. Oh, wow. Yeah. Apparently they put these sensors on football players and they map how fast they accelerate, um, the angles that they can cut and run and yada, yada, yada for performance training and conditioning. So, that was very interesting. Yeah.

[01:05:03] So, I mean, it was just, you know, another splendid hike along the eastern floor of the Devil's Path. That's about 10.6 miles, 4,250 feet of vert. And it's a beautiful hike to do in the winter in the Catskills. Yeah. And it was cold. We saw, we were, um, on Twin watching the snowstorm blowing in from over by Slide Mountain coming towards us. And by the time we got back to the car, it was coming on with full force.

[01:05:31] The drive home was probably the most treacherous and interesting part of the day. And, like, what did you hit when you were driving past, like, driving back? Like, were you hitting snow or sleet or rain or stuff? I'm going to say it was snow. Um, it was, you know, it was coming down relatively hard.

[01:05:51] Some of the roads we were on had been pretreated where they go out and, uh, salt them in advance of the snow coming down to try to get underneath it, if you will. So it doesn't stick to the road as much, but not all of the roads have been pretreated. There was a lot of crazies out. I felt, you know, crazy drivers out.

[01:06:11] I kind of prejudice in terms of thinking that all these crazy drivers were skiers because skiers tend to drive like they ski. So, yeah, you know, it was kind of a long drive home and took quite a while.

[01:06:27] So, Davis, who was in his car, um, behind me, um, we kept kind of leapfrogging on the way back because I had to stop a couple times to pick up some things like, you know, some beer from local goods was a stop. And then I stopped on 28 to clean off my wipers because they were icing up and it took a while to get back to the valley. But it was a good day. It was worth it getting out.

[01:06:54] Not, you don't get many days like that in the winter. So enjoy them when you can. Yeah, definitely. Exactly why I went out today. You know, I'm just, I was just like, I can't, I can't pass up this opportunity to, even though it's cold, you're prepared for it. You'll survive. Yeah. As long as you keep moving, um, we have the gear these days that, you know, keeps you very comfortable in those types of temperatures.

[01:07:20] But again, the key is that you shouldn't stop, you know, and if you stop, it should only be briefly because if, you know, if you shut down for 15, 20 minutes, you can really start to get a chill. That's hard to kick when you, when you start hiking again. So, you know, Danny and I, when we were doing the devil's path, both of us were relatively experienced.

[01:07:41] And so when we were getting to different parts of the terrain where we're going to be either summit walking for a while or on our way back to the car, you know, we definitely changed our layers because we knew our, our body temperatures were going to be changing to those different hiking conditions. And we stayed reasonably comfortable. I'll say this. I'm thankful for the fact that I, I know a lot of people have trouble hiking in the winter because they do get cold.

[01:08:08] Some people get really cold in the winter. Um, I don't seem to have that problem. I don't know if it's because I grew up skiing in Southwestern New York with Lake effect snowfall and skiing in my blue jeans for a while, you know, and, and being stuck on these old chairlifts freezing. If that's some, did something to condition me for later in life or, you know, my genetics or whatnot, but you'll see people out there.

[01:08:35] They're just wearing so much gear, puffy jacket, shells, big, thick gloves, you know, just going on and on. And I'm, I'm barely wearing a couple layers comfortable. I mean, yeah, that, that stuff, it's, it gets expensive, but it's worth it. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I have the gear in my pack. I got a set of puffy gear in the back and a bunch of other things, about 10, 12 liters of things.

[01:09:02] I, I frankly, I have never used in all my years of winter hiking, but it's there just in case I need it. That's good. Yeah. That's good though. Yeah. So, well, good. Glad you got out. Glad you got a good time. So, I mean, we both had a good day. So let's go on to Catskill news. Uh, what, what's that? Wait, what's that new hiking rule? 2750. Oh, the, so the new hiking rule, she's, I already blew it tonight.

[01:09:32] Uh, so Danny and I, when we started, we kind of like just gotten this bad loop of talking politics as we're hiking up plateau from 214. So I just said to him at one point that we're at 2750 feet vert. We've just entered the no politic zone. Nice.

[01:09:55] The new hiking rule is, you know, uh, once you get above 2750, you can't talk about politics anymore. Yeah. So, and you can't, you can't wear cotton and you know, you, you can't leave a trace yada, yada, yada. And you can't talk politics above 2750. So there you go. I like it. Well done. Well done. New rule. All right.

[01:10:20] So news, Catskill news volunteer, uh, all the organizations are making up their schedules. 3500 club, Catskill trail crew, Catskill mountains club, Vincere Center, Jolly Rovers trail crew, Burnley mountain fire tower. Uh, also, if you need stickers, let me know, send me a personal message, whatever, or send Ted a personal message. He'll get ahold of me. Uh, weather forecast for this weekend looks to be still pretty cool. It's cold.

[01:10:45] It's going to be lingering around, uh, 12 to 19 degrees with a wind chill of negative 15 to negative six degrees, which I mean, I'm prepared for all the time, but you know, like it, I don't think it's ever accurate. This is mountain weather forecast, by the way, mountain forecast. Uh, that's Friday. Uh, it looks to be some clouds, not bad Saturday, some clouds as well, a high of 23, a low of negative six with a wind chill.

[01:11:14] So that's, uh, prepare once again, Sunday looks to be a high of 21 later on in the day with a low of negative four with some clouds as well. So it looks so far, this is from Tuesday. It's going to be a nice weekend. So we never know what the hell wall fricking New York state is going to bring us. So as I had on Sunday, so yeah. Yeah. So Ted, let's get into our last set of sponsors and then we'll get onto John, right?

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[01:13:09] All right. All right. So let's get on to the guest of the night. So John here from Chris, the Catskill Regional Invasive Species Program. Did I get that right? It's the Catskill Regional Invasive Species Partnership. Partnership. God damn. Man, I always, I'm not 100% always. That's close. We call it crisp. They call it crisp. Awesome. I like that. It's here tonight to talk to us about invasive species in the Catskills.

[01:13:39] And, you know, what we can spot out in the trails, what we can, you know, observe, what we can report, stuff like that. And his knowledge upon invasive species. And we know this is a growing subject that is happening, is being constantly researched about. And it's happening here. So, John, welcome to the show tonight. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you having me on. Yeah, yeah. It's good to have you here. You know, we've been in contact for a little bit now.

[01:14:07] And it's great to see you come on the show and talk about invasive species. Because I have questions galore. Not just this. This is nothing. So, be ready. Be ready. Great. Yeah, that's why I'm here. So, give us a little background about yourself, sir. So, I have been at the Catskill Center, the Catskill Regional Invasive Species Program or Partnership. Now you have me saying program. Don't worry, John.

[01:14:35] We'll corrupt your mind in more ways than just one tonight. It's just the beginning. It's a program of the Catskill Center. And I've been at the Catskill Center for the last nine years as the CRISP director. I have spent my career mostly in doing ecology, landscape ecology, been interested in habitats and the plants and animals that live in them. And that's what brought me to invasive species.

[01:15:06] So, ecology, like landscape ecology. Can you explain more about that? About what you're specializing? Yeah. So, landscape ecology is looking at any large area and trying to figure out what are the ecological communities that live there. And how they relate to one another and the species that live within each of those communities. And how they move within those communities and between those communities and between different landscapes.

[01:15:35] That's what interests me most. It's a lot of work. It sounds like. It's interesting. I think. You're with the Catskill Center, correct? Yes. Cool. Yeah. We had Jeff on here before and that was a fantastic chat. Oh, great. Yeah. You guys have done a lot for the Catskills. And I appreciate your work on the Catskills because it's a big part of the Catskills. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

[01:16:00] We have a really diverse organization and we do a lot of different things on the ground, including the CRISP program. Nice. Nice. Nice. So, before we start getting into CRISP, like the actual Catskill stuff, can you just chat a little bit more about invasive species? Yeah. So, New York State defines an invasive species as having two attributes.

[01:16:26] One of them is that it's new to an ecosystem. And the second thing is that it causes some kind of harm. And that harm might be to the economy or to human health or to the environment.

[01:16:38] So, if it doesn't have those two attributes, if it's not something new that's moved in, or if it doesn't cause harm, then it's not considered an invasive species, at least by New York State regulations and what we're working on. Awesome. Yeah. So, I mean, we're talking about stuff like, you know, we'll talk about deeper later, but, you know, the stuff that a Japanese knotweed, what else?

[01:17:07] What else can we, can we just bow off the bat of your head? Yeah. So, there's a lot of them. Yeah. Yeah. Just like name some of the most common. Spotted lanternfly. I wanted to hit on beach leaf disease. That's something new that people may not be aware of. Hemlockule adelgid and a lot of people are aware of. There's Japanese barberry, Japanese knotweed that you mentioned. And there's lots of invasive species that we could talk about. Oh, yeah.

[01:17:35] So, not one, two, or three, but 300. There's hundreds of them, yeah. Actually. So, John, what got you interested in this field of work? Well, I think that it's, I guess I've always been interested in protecting beautiful ecological areas like the Catskills here that we have, that we all get to enjoy.

[01:18:05] Some of us get to live here. A lot of us get to come here and recreate and enjoy for a lot of different reasons. What interested me most, like coming out of college, was understanding that humans have a lot of impact on our natural systems. And those systems are changing.

[01:18:28] And because of the way that we've fragmented some of our habitats, because of the way that we're contributing to climate change, because we're bringing in invasive species, I feel obligated to try to manage these natural areas to promote the health of them over time.

[01:18:49] So, that's what interests me most, is trying to understand how those ecosystems work, and then what are some of the things that might be interfering with those ecosystems. And you made a reference to fragmented, we've fragmented these habitats. What is it that that means or refers to? That means that we chop them up by building housing developments in some of our forested areas or building roads through our mountains.

[01:19:18] We're breaking up these, what used to be big forests and habitats. We're breaking them up into much smaller pieces. We're lucky in the Catskills, I could just add that we do have some of the largest unfragmented forests in New York State and in the eastern United States, actually.

[01:19:43] So, this is a concept that's new to me, maybe not stash, but what is it about the fragmenting or breaking up of a natural area through development that interferes with that area to maintain itself and protect itself? What's going on with this that's detrimental to it? Yeah, that's a really good question.

[01:20:10] Some of the things might be that you're preventing the movement of some part of that ecosystem. It might be a river, a lake that you're dammed up or changed the course of. It might be that you have this big forest where you have animals that move in and out of it.

[01:20:32] When you build a road across it, animals may not be able to cross from one side of the road to the other, especially the bigger highways like the Thruway or Route 17. And then also when you build those roads through some of these forests, what you do is you introduce, you're removing the trees, you're introducing edge.

[01:20:59] So, you might have areas where there's more sunlight and those are areas that invasive species, for instance, could move into. And then they start to change the ecosystem themselves. So, this leads me to a natural question before I turn it back over to Stosh. And maybe Stosh knows where I'm going with this.

[01:21:23] But when you talk about cutting in roads that introduce edge and that edge or break in the continuation of the environment opens the door to invasives. What about in the Catskills? Do trails, maintained trails or unmaintained trails, create that edge effect that you're referring to?

[01:21:49] Because in the Catskills, a brewing issue is the informal social paths that go up the quote-unquote untrailed peaks into these boreal forest areas. So, do those edges, does that damage the environment? Yeah, it does change the environment.

[01:22:12] And what we would be most concerned with would be an area that is unfragmented or continuous where you put in a new trail or people start walking and creating a new trail. And it's those first few people that are having the biggest impact on the ecosystem.

[01:22:33] And there is a big difference, I would be, I should point out, that there is a big difference between putting a highway through a forest versus somebody walking on a hiking trail. Yeah. But there are impacts of people walking on a hiking trail where you really quickly, you start to erode through the leaf litter and then you start to go through the organic matter.

[01:23:01] There are little bugs and insects and microbes that are living under the leaf litter and in that soil that really quickly disappear from the tread itself. And then you're going to have a population on the right side of the tread and on the left side. And they may not be able to mix anymore if you have a trail that's worn down to mineral soil that goes through an area.

[01:23:29] And then when people are on the trail, they're disturbing birds, mammals, any animals that are there. Birds, for instance, some of them don't like to nest near trails because when you have a lot of people coming through, then that could disturb them. And they may move away from those trails if you have enough people.

[01:23:50] So there's a lot of impacts that you have that may be pretty small on the landscape scale, like we were talking about, but in a certain environment, they could be really important. Yeah. So with that, of course, we know we have, of course, we've talked about informal trails and stuff like that. Have you been involved with that research project that the DEC has been going with? I haven't been involved. I've been... Outrageous. Get this guy involved. Wow.

[01:24:20] Wow. Listening to what's going on. We're right into the scandal a couple minutes into the interview. Okay. I'm very interested in the research that they're doing. And, yeah, the other impact of it, I could say, is people could transport invasive species into some of these areas where you have this newly disturbed habitat and you might be tracking in a seed or something that could start growing there.

[01:24:50] And you could start a population, especially in some of these really sensitive environments like the higher elevations of the Catskills. Wow. So let's get you in on that. I'll put my little word in for you to get in on that. Because that's a big... You know, you've got to admit that's a big topic. It's like you said, it's not like a road going in. But, you know, something going up through the boreal forest or something like that could have a big impact on the wildlife. And, you know, we follow herd paths.

[01:25:18] And that herd path, you know, the deer, the bears might follow it. And they're going to lead you up to the top to a canister full of nothing of food. Like, I mean, so it goes all over the place. It's a big topic. Let's not get crazy into it and get fighting over it or anything like that like we used to. All right. So, John, let's talk about CRISP. Let's talk about your program that you run. Let's break it down.

[01:25:48] Great. Yeah. So the Catskill Regional Invasive Species Partnership is one of eight partnerships for regional invasive species management in New York State. Each of these partnerships is working in a different region of New York State. And our region itself covers all or part of seven counties. So we're all of the blue line. And then we extend beyond that.

[01:26:14] And it's an area of about 3.3 million acres. What we're trying to do is to be aware of any invasive species that might be moving towards us.

[01:26:28] And then ones that get here that we recognize early that have high impact, what we want to do is to potentially eradicate them before they create major problems and the Catskills. So we're doing early detection, what's called rapid response. And that's the removal of some of these invasive species, if possible.

[01:26:55] And then we also do a lot of outreach like this, meeting with people, having trainings, public programs, some of the tabling events in the Catskills. And I can give you some of the what we did last year. We surveyed over 3,400 acres for invasive species. We managed invasive species over about 220 acres. And we did about 36 programs for 806 people.

[01:27:24] So the main reason that invasive species get moved and that they're here is because of us, because of humans, that we might have brought them over from a different continent for some reason, either intentionally or unintentionally.

[01:27:42] And a big part of our job is it's not just managing plants and animals, but it's trying to raise awareness among people of how these invasive species get spread and what we can do to stop that spread or slow it at least. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:28:00] And a lot of that has to also a good thing to point out is what damage they do, because I mean, the good thing is, I mean, it's not good thing, but to scare people to be like, you know, I mean, those, like I have said to Japanese knotweed looks beautiful when they're blooming, but they absolutely destroy everything in their path. Like, like, like people see them when they're blooming and that's like, oh, that's pretty. But then, like, it's, it's just totally destroying our waterways and stuff like that along the sides. It's the, it's disgusting.

[01:28:29] But I mean, let's scare people, scare people to like start scaring people, John. So I looked at your map. You guys, like, I wouldn't, I mean, this is Catskills, but this is beyond the Catskills. This is Oxego County, Delaware County, Schoharie County, Ulster and Sulawir. You're like, you guys are huge. That's, that's massive amount of like area. And most of Green County and a little part of Orange County. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like that.

[01:28:57] I mean, when you said 3 million acres, I was like, ah, he's lying. But then I'm like, look at this. I'm like, oh yeah, he's not lying actually. Yeah. It is a big area. So that, that shows again, like we can talk about the other staff that work with me, but there's only three and a half of us working year round.

[01:29:17] And then what we need is a lot more eyes on the ground, a lot more help from people in identifying these invasives, reporting them and helping us to do something about them. And how can we do that? Like I said, one of the major things is to stop the spread of them.

[01:29:37] So recognizing that you're seeing an invasive species and it may be that the best thing to do might be just to report it. And we use a program called IMAP invasives. So there's a nyimapinvasives.org is the near IMAP invasives website. Anybody can learn how to use this platform to report invasive species.

[01:30:05] That's how we know where invasives are is that people are reporting them through this database. So we can figure out whether a species is widespread or is it just getting here and we have a chance to eradicate it. Other things that we could do would be take jumping worms, for instance. I'm not sure if you guys are aware of jumping worms.

[01:30:29] There's a group of species of worms that are native to Asia that were introduced here in different ways. And they've spread throughout a lot of the northeastern United States. And they're in the Catskills. And we find them in some of the lower elevations of the Catskills. They are what's called an annual species.

[01:30:54] So they overwinter as eggs or cocoons. And they hatch in the spring. And then they grow throughout the season. And then they lay their eggs in the fall. They're worms that get to be pretty long. And they really change the soil. So we were talking about human beings trampling the soil, causing the loss of leaf litter and organic matter.

[01:31:24] And that fragments habitat. These worms will do the same thing, except they're eating the leaf litter. It's disappearing. It will leach through the soil. And they can be pretty destructive in forests. So the way that they move is from people moving them. And they could move them in the tread of their boots and their hiking boots, going from one place to another. They can move them by sharing a plant.

[01:31:54] If they have these jumping worms in their yard or garden, and they share it with somebody else that may not have them, then they can introduce them there. Also, they could be moved by mulch. Or if leaves get moved, if you move your leaves from one place to another, these worms can get moved that way. And, you know,

[01:32:19] a while ago I didn't understand why they'd say for you to keep the firewood in your own county. Is that the, something like that is within 50 miles? Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't understand that before I started hiking. And now I understand it because, you know, something could be in there like the woolly, lealget and stuff like that could be transported easily from one county to another. And then all of a sudden it spreads. Yeah. And that's a great point.

[01:32:45] And that's a major one is there's a whole campaign called don't move firewood or, or burn it where you buy it. If you go to a campground, it's better to buy the firewood there than it is to bring it from some other place, because there's a lot of insects that can live in a dead piece of wood and you could move things hundreds of miles really easily. And I can point out also that the spotted lanternfly is a species that it's

[01:33:14] come into our area over the last few years. First came into New York state in 2020. It's a species that lays its eggs on any smooth surface. So that could be like your camp chair that you bring from wherever you live up into the Catskills. It could be on your car. These eggs hatch and, and then these lanternfly spread to some other area. And there are species that first came,

[01:33:44] was first discovered in the United States in 2014 in Pennsylvania and has spread throughout. It's 22, 23 states now, including New York state where they first showed up in 2020. They eat 70 to a hundred different species of plants. They can be devastating to vineyards. So that's a, that's an invasive species that is really impactful and important not to move and

[01:34:14] to recognize what it looks like as an adult, when it has wings and you see it hopping around or to look for the eggs this time of year. So that if you do move your camp chair from wherever you live up into the Catskills, you can make sure that those eggs aren't on the chair before you move it. John, who the hell is camping this time of year? I'm like, wait a minute, John, nobody's camping. Winter camping.

[01:34:44] I know. Only psychos like me can't camp this time of year. So, you know, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's really crazy to like, like this is, this is number one. Why I did this, this podcast is to spread the education information because not a lot of people know that, you know, bringing firewood, you know, 50 miles up might have something in it that could cause a disruption to our forest could fricking on, I wouldn't say annihilate, but come close to annihilate to our forest.

[01:35:12] So crazy. So Ted, what's up? What do you got buddy? Oh, I got so much stash. You got so much. Yeah. But before we dive into different types of evasives and while we're on this topic of burn it, where you buy it, is it a good practice, John, for hikers like Stash and I, and our listeners to clean off our hiking shoes or boots before we go elsewhere to hike, before we come to the Catskills from elsewhere?

[01:35:42] Yeah, it definitely is. There are like those worms I was talking about, the jumping worms, they're eggs or cocoons. They're actually called, uh, those are as big as the head of a pen. It's really, they're really small so they could easily be transported in mud. If you have any mud on your hiking boots and the tread or on, on the, uh, on the shoe itself. Uh, so cleaning off that mud is really important.

[01:36:11] Plus you could be transporting seeds of a lot of invasive species, like Japanese stoke grasses, one that has small seeds and people can bring them from one trailhead to another, uh, and they'll easily grow into another plant that can spread from there. so speeds or, uh, eggs of, of some of these species can easily be moved. The Catskill Center is working.

[01:36:40] We have a grant from DEC to build 20 bootbrush stations, uh, throughout the Catskills at DEC trailheads. So hopefully in the next year or two, you'll start to see some, some bootbrush stations getting put in. And I would encourage you whenever you're going into or out of a, a natural area to use the bootbrush station so that you're not transporting any mud or seeds. Um,

[01:37:08] we built a couple around the Ashokan rail trail. We'll be building a few more this year, or you can get handheld brushes. Uh, if there isn't a bootbrush station to brush your gear off. Yeah. And also your, your pets. Like if you hike with a dog or something, they, they get seeds on them. Um, so it's good to, to make sure they're not transporting anything either. Yeah. I had carried in my Jeep for years,

[01:37:37] ever since I started hiking in the Cats, just a handheld brush that I, you know, clean off my boots by hand. Usually when I'm done hiking, if I'm taking my boots off or when I get home in the garage, but is that enough? Just a hand cleaning like that. Is that enough to get rid of the jumping worms and the spotter and spotted lantern fly and the mini stosh spiders? Yeah. Yeah. It would get rid of, um, I mean,

[01:38:08] there are invasive things where you'd want to, you may need to clean your boots with a disinfectant, but for the things that we have around here, yeah. If you're removing the mud and dirt from your boots, then you're, you're, um, preventing the spread of, of these species removing. So when you're, when you're done, you'd smack your boots together, clean them off as much as you can. People. It's basically what it is. We have these, like if you show us something, you can see it. Toothbrush.

[01:38:38] Yeah. That looks like my toothbrush. Yeah. It's got more bugs on it though, John. You can use, um, this to, to brush off your boots. Oops. And, uh, then there's a pick on one end. Oh, that's, that's fancy. You can use to, to get within the tread. So I think they use, um, they, they have boot brushes like this that they use for horses, like to clean the hooves. Um, but we have these, if you see me around, I'll give you one. Nice. Awesome. Be happy to.

[01:39:07] So let's, let's do a rundown of some of these invasives in the Catskills. Um, we copied right off your webpage, the categories. So starting with the aquatic plants for 500 Jeopardy days, why don't you give us the rundown of some of the aquatic plants that we would find in the Catskills, what they're doing, what to watch out for, how to prevent their spread. Sure. Um,

[01:39:36] maybe the one that people are most familiar with is water chestnut. Uh, it has leaves that kind of grow in a circle, or we call it a rosette on the water surface. Uh, and they produce these nuts that are black or brown, and they have these really sharp spikes on them. If you've seen them, if you walked in, ever walked on a beach, uh, that has them, you'll never forget them. They have these really sharp spikes. Uh,

[01:40:04] and that's how they spread is through those nutlets. They're native to Europe, Asia, and Africa. And they were introduced by water gardeners, uh, here in the Catskills, here in the United States, I should say, uh, in the 1800s. Uh, so a lot of the water plants were actually brought, uh, over intentionally by water gardeners because they're exotic looking, or they might've been spread by water gardeners. Yeah. And these,

[01:40:34] these look actually like horrible. It takes over the whole water area and it covers the water. So that makes, I'm, I'm pretty sure that that cools, uh, the water down and then it makes it a little bit more difficult for breeding and stuff like that in lakes. Yeah. So, and a lot of these plants, they grow really densely. A lot of these, uh, aquatic invasive plants, they grow really densely. So they're shading the water column below, uh, them. And, uh,

[01:41:01] what that does is that you don't get sunlight going below. So other plants may not be able to grow. Uh, other plants may die and degrade, and those might be degrading, um, and changing the oxygen levels and, uh, pond for instance. And that could change all the other wildlife that lives there. There, there might be, um, like I said, other plants that can't survive there.

[01:41:28] And there might be animals that can't survive there because food that they depend on isn't there. The oxygen levels are changed. Uh, and it could change the way that we recreate. If we have something like, it's not a species that we have, but it's a species that, uh, is in New York state. It's called hydrilla. It grows really densely.

[01:41:51] It can grow so densely that it might be that you won't be able to kayak in your favorite pond or canoe. Uh, so a lot of these plants are, are grow really densely, these invasive plants, and, um, they can impact recreation also. And I would say that's like, wouldn't it be like 90% of the invasive species grow really dense and then they damage everything else in their path basically? Yeah, that's one of the, yeah.

[01:42:20] So some of the aspects of invasives that make them invasives is that, um, um, they grow really densely so they can crowd other plants, for instance, or animals or whatever. And, uh, they grow really fast. They reproduce a lot. Uh, so a lot of the plants that we're talking about, both aquatic or terrestrial, they're, they're producing a lot of, for aquatic plants,

[01:42:49] it might be that they have like a kind of a tuber, turion that, that splits, um, and, uh, or they produce nuts like this, uh, water chestnut. And they produce a lot of them and those things float along and then they, they just spread from there. Uh, so those are some of the aspects of invasive species that make them invasive and, and make them able to outcompete some of the native plants. And, and usually, uh, uh,

[01:43:19] they're also kind of generalists that they can take advantage of different environments. So for a terrestrial plant, it might be that they can grow in different soil types, whether it's dry or wet, it might be whether it's acidic or alkaline, that they have this wide range that they can grow in. And it might be that they can grow under like direct sunlight or it might be shaded and they can still grow.

[01:43:47] So a lot of these invasives have these just features of them that they're able to take advantage of the environment as it is. And, and also a changing environment to be able to take advantages as, uh, these habitats are changing over time. So why don't we move on, John, if you, if you want to, uh, to terrestrial animals that are invasive to the Catskills.

[01:44:17] What, what, what's invaded the Catskills? What damage are they doing? And what can we do about it? Yeah. Um, I'll talk about something. It's not really, it's kind of an animal, I guess. Um, we'll start out with, uh, beach leaf disease is something that's relatively new. I don't think a lot of people have heard about it. It was discovered in Ohio in 2012. What they started to see was beach trees,

[01:44:45] which we have a lot of in the Catskills. They started to see a banding of the leaves. So in between the veins of the leaves, there'd be a dark band. And they started to see that the, over time, the leaves were kind of curling up and dying. And there was dropping their, its leaves. And they found that there's a nematode, uh, that had, was within the cells of the leaves of, of some of these trees. And that nematode, uh,

[01:45:14] that causes the beach leaf disease has spread from Ohio to the Eastern United States. First came into New York state in 28. Um, and we first saw it here in the Catskills in 2022. And, and, and now I would say it's over, it's completely covered areas in the blue line. You find it everywhere. Uh, a lot of the trail heads, a lot of the trails through the Catskills.

[01:45:41] I think out of those seven counties that we were talking about, Stosh, there's six counties have beach leaf disease. And like I said, we only saw it a couple of years ago. We don't know how it moves. There's a lot that's not known about this. We, we do a number of programs about it. It's something that we're really interested in people reporting. So you could take a picture of it and send it to me, or you could report it through IMAP invasives. Like I said,

[01:46:10] and I will have the IMAP invasive links, uh, in the show notes, just to let you know. And I'm going to post about this on our social media pages, because that's, that's fantastic. If you could, uh, does the Catskill center post like, uh, can you have like Jeff or somebody post pictures about the, uh, the beach leaf disease so we can share that and stuff. Cause that's, you know, that's important. Of course, like just like the spotted land for fly and, and such like that. We need to keep that information going.

[01:46:40] Yeah, definitely. And beach trees to, to step back a little bit, um, beach, beach. American beach is a major part of our forest. It's, uh, it's a tree that produced, produces a fruit, um, beach mast or beach nuts, uh, that are eaten by a lot of different species. A lot of mammals, bears, raccoons, birds like turkeys, uh, will eat, um, beach nuts. Uh,

[01:47:10] it's one of the, the trees that produces a lot of food that a lot of animals depend on. So as we lose, as we may lose beach from some of our forests over the next few years, then these animals will have to find other food sources. So are we going to see the level of devastation to the beach trees that we saw with the, uh, elm trees or rather the ash trees with the emerald ash borer?

[01:47:39] Um, yeah, I think so. I, and I think it might be even faster. Wow. Wow. And there's a lot more beach trees than there is ash trees in the catskills. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. So ash trees generally in the catskills are growing at lower elevations. That's where the most abundant, um, and that's where you, you saw a lot of them get wiped out from the emerald ash borer. Beach trees, uh, uh, they're growing at slightly higher elevations, the slopes of the catskills.

[01:48:10] Uh, and like I said, they have a major role to play in the forest. Uh, and we'll have to see what happens to them over time. What's the forecast on that? I, I, in my relatively short hiking career in the catskills, which, you know, is not even 10 years, so to speak. I kind of saw the elimination of the, uh, elm trees and in about eight years, it seems. What about the beach? Do you mean the ash trees? Yeah, the ash trees,

[01:48:39] I could call them elm, but yeah, the ash trees seem to be, you know, all gone now. What about the beach trees? Well, yeah. Um, well, actually I, I think of a, uh, a little bit of sliver of hope for the, the ash trees is that there, there's a, a group, uh, that, that started the monitoring and managing ash project. And you can find that online. And, uh,

[01:49:05] what they started doing is training people to look for what are called lingering ash. Not all of the ash trees die. Uh, there's about 1% of them that may survive. And what they're doing is trying to find these lingering ash. Uh, and what they'll do is, uh, take scions from those trees. And, and they'll working with the forest service, um,

[01:49:32] be able to combine those scions together to create, uh, ash trees that will have some resistance to emerald ash borer. So one tree might have one strategy to, to, um, slow down or, or stop the emerald ash borer. But if you combine those trees together, then you could create a tree that, that has a lot of resistance to the emerald ash borer. It's not something that's going to change tomorrow or the next day, but this is something that decades from now,

[01:50:01] we might be able to reintroduce trees that have some resistance to emerald ash borer. We got to think of a crazy name for that, like hybrid ash trees or something like that. Like, I don't know. The Kudish, call them the Kudish ash. That guy's going to live forever. Yeah. These are genetically modified. Is that what's going on? You guys? yeah, well, it's taking the genetics within the tree and combining those genetics to make something, uh, that's a little more resistant.

[01:50:31] So the, or hopefully a lot more resistant to the emerald ash borer. They should be known as Franken trees. Franken. Yeah. Franken ash trees. Franken ash trees. We'll come up with the name, John. We'll definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So, so before, before I hand it back to Stash, I want to know, is there any invasive species in the cat skills or is there an invasive species that we can introduce into the cat skills that will totally eliminate all the nettles?

[01:51:02] Are nettles invasive? Well, not whether they are or they aren't. I just, I don't care what it is, whether it's a jumping worm, a spotted lantern fly, or, or anything else, the stash, ant, whatnot, just to eliminate the nettles. I would, I would start that campaign. Um, I'm not a big friend of nettles or they're not a friend of me, but, yeah, they're, so there are native species of nettles and, uh,

[01:51:33] there are native species. I could mention too, that we don't consider them invasive. You know, I started out by giving you the definition of what's an invasive species according to New York state. So any, uh, there are native species that have huge impacts on the forest, like white tail deer, for instance. I said that before I said that, I said that with Ted, I was like, uh, deer are fricking invasive. Cause sorry. They, they are

[01:52:03] one concern with losing these forest trees is that we don't have the regeneration. To make more trees, right? They're on. If you look on the forest floor, oftentimes, especially at the lower elevations, you don't see smaller seedlings coming up, um, because the deer are eating them. These jumping worms might have some impacts on the soil, uh, for some of these species where they, they can't regenerate. Um, but,

[01:52:33] and, and I would make the point, like what I'm doing, like we're not just focused on invasive species, but we're also looking at like, what are the other changes that are occurring in the forest over time? And, and how could we help with that? Could we, for instance, fence some areas off where you could get regeneration? We're working to, in some of the areas where we're removing invasive plants, to plant native species, um,

[01:53:02] from Catskill native nursery, to be able to fill in the gaps. One area that we're working at where there was a lot of mortality from the emerald ash borer is along the Ashokan rail trail. Uh, we have a site in Ashokan where we're working, uh, where the ash trees died. There are these forest gaps and a lot of invasive species moved in. Uh, there's honeysuckles there. There's Japanese barberry.

[01:53:33] Um, there's other species that are there. Um, and we're trying to remove those, those invasive plants and plant native plants so that we can restore those habitats. Uh, so that's another thing that we're doing to, to try to, to get the, uh, that habitat moving in the right direction again. And so for the, whatever trees we plant, we need to put cages around them so the deer don't eat them.

[01:54:00] And then we have to come back and look at the cages and make sure they don't get knocked over the windows and blow them over. Uh, a branch knocks them over whatever. Um, so that the deer won't come and eat these little trees. And there's only three of you doing this. Yeah. There's three and a half of us. Jesus. So I can mention our other staff. I just wanted to give a shout out to the people that I work with. Please do. Sarah Coney. She's our aquatic invasive species manager.

[01:54:29] Sarah's out there every day in the summer, removing these aquatic invasive plants, um, identifying them, serving for them, working with landowners and, and like associations to, to try to remove some of these invasives, uh, that might be in their lakes. Dan Snyder. Nerp is our terrestrial invasive species manager. He's working on upland habitats and, and surveying those habitats,

[01:54:55] looking for a lot of terrestrial invasive plants. And then we have Sammy Delaney is our volunteer and outreach coordinator. She works half time with crisp and then the rest of her time, uh, for the Catskill center, uh, on our volunteer programs. Uh, so that's another aspect of what people can do is they could volunteer to help us remove invasive species. They could come to our trainings to learn how to identify and report invasive species.

[01:55:24] There's lots of things that people could do to really help out here. And with, with all that we're, we're doing with these, this podcast, we're going to, all of our time is going to be. Sobered up by volunteering, volunteering for the Catskill center, volunteering for Catskill trail crew, New York, New York to the trail camp. We're not going to have any free time to hike, man. I imagine when you're out looking for and mapping invasive species, you can be hiking at the same time. True. The key, the key would be, uh,

[01:55:54] identifying them. Is there, I'm not invasive app. I could mention that's a really good point, tab. What we want people to do is, is to be able to just take a picture of what they think is an invasive species. Um, they upload it when they get back to wifi, and I get an email saying that, Tad, you were on such and such trail. You saw what you think was the species. And I can confirm whether that's what you saw or not. And then you get an email, whether that's what it was.

[01:56:24] And, and, and, um, we know that there's beach leaf disease, for instance, on, on some other trail in the Catskills. So really useful to do that. Technology, baby. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you're definitely going to plug into that technology and try to become proficient with it. And so as I was, as you were answering that, I'm cruising through your webpage and I asked you about, uh, terrestrial invasive animals. That would be like four legged things, right?

[01:56:54] Um, well, it could be, I mean, that would be part of the category is, you know, it could be something four legged. And I guess, I guess the things that jumped to mind or the spotted land or fly that we talked about, that's a, well, I, one thing jumps to my mind. I'm, as I'm cruising through your webpage, I see this photo of something which you have not talked about, but I need to know if this is in the Catskills, the feral swine. Um, we don't have those in the Catskills. Thank goodness. Wow.

[01:57:23] What the hell is that? Go to the webpage, man. They got this photo of these feral swines. They look like I'd rather run into a mountain lion on the top of Rocky than a feral swine. Yeah. So the feral swine have been, as far as we know, they're eradicated from New York. They are, they, they're wild boars. They grow really big. Um, Oh God. Yeah. I've, I've actually met some of those down in Arizona. Well, those are wild boars,

[01:57:52] but in a bar or out in the woods, out in the woods. But this is, yeah, no way. Hell no. Well, you've actually had these in the Catskills. Um, they were in New York, um, and, and they were eradicated. Um, we think at one point in time, I think, um, I don't think we have anything that's, there's a lot of vagueness now. John was very,

[01:58:20] when we were talking about little things you could squash with your feet, like jumping worms and lantern flies. He was, he had it nailed down, but we're talking about the feral swine and he's, he pulled out his sawed off shotgun and his compass. So it takes out a different tone. Yeah. Another animal I could mention is hemlock will the adelgid. Um, probably a lot of people are familiar with that. it first, it's a aphid, um,

[01:58:49] like bug that, uh, first came into the Catskills in the, the nineties. It feeds on the, the branches of hemlock trees. Uh, and what you see over time is the hemlocks will start to lose their needles and the branches will start to get bare. And the, the trees do die over time, um, from hemlock bully adelgid. And the ray of hope is that there's a, what's called the bio control, a biological control. Um, there's actually several,

[01:59:17] several species that will eat hemlock willy adelgid. Um, the New York state hemlock initiative at Cornell is raising these bio control and releasing them into a few areas in the Catskills. And, uh, we're hoping that over time, those bio control will eat more of the hemlock willy adelgid. Uh, and we'll see less of the, the hemlock willy adelgid over time. And the hemlocks will be able to recover to some degree.

[01:59:45] It won't eradicate the hemlock willy adelgid. You're always going to have the hemlock willy adelgid, but trying to get it to lower levels, uh, so that the hemlocks can continue to grow, um, and survive here. I mean, the one thing that I, I always question is that a lot of these invasive species come from other countries like, like, and they're just bringing them over for, I mean, of course this was hundreds of years ago for what reason?

[02:00:15] Cause they look pretty. Like, did they not know that that was a stupid idea to do a couple hundred years ago? Yeah. Like we mentioned, um, uh, the water chestnut was brought over by these water gardeners. There, there's, um, Japanese knotweed was brought over because people thought it was exotic looking. And then they found that it grew fast. Maybe they could use as hedge rows or something. So they're planting it around, um, the Japanese barberry,

[02:00:44] the same thing was brought over as an ornamental because it's kind of exotic looking. Um, people planted them as hedge rows, but they produce a huge amount of seed and they grow really densely. So they, uh, outcompete our native species over time. Um, but I would just want to point out that these biocontrol, the beetles, the silver flies that are being, uh,

[02:01:12] released to control the hemlock woolly adelgid, uh, those are only brought here and studied over a long period of time before they're released in the wild. So somebody is going over to wherever they come from and, and looking at another thing that I didn't mention about invasive species, they're coming from somewhere else and they often don't have the predators and diseases that they would have in their native lands. So, um,

[02:01:40] finding something that only eats a certain plant, for instance, and then bringing it over here, you would need to raise it in the lab, make sure it's only eating that plant, not eating any of the native species. Um, then you might release it in a caged environment where it can't escape. Uh, so these things happen, uh, the studies of biocontrols happen over decades and they're well studied by the

[02:02:09] time they get released into the wild. So I have one big question, no pun intended, giant hogweed. Giant hogweed. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's been a big thing for the past couple of years, of course. I mean, it's, it's definitely one of those topics that can be like, I wouldn't say controversial, but like there's one looks like the other, the other looks like this. So what do you, can you chat about giant hogweed? Yeah.

[02:02:39] So giant hogweed gets to be a really tall plant, about 15 feet tall. It's these huge leaves. Um, when it's, uh, mature, uh, it has these white flowers, um, that are kind of like a upside down umbrella at the top. It, there used to be more of it in the Catskills, the dance night and nerf that I mentioned, he's really knocked down the populations along with a lot of the,

[02:03:06] the interns and the strike team that we've had over the years. We've wherever it gets reported, we go and verify that that's what it is. And we dig it up and remove it. It, it sap actually, when it gets exposed to the sun, it causes burns on your skin. So if you get it on your skin, you could end up with getting the, these really severe burns. If you get it in your eye, it could blind you. Uh,

[02:03:35] so when we're working with it, like when we're cutting them down, I'm digging them up. Um, we're wearing like goggles, tie back suits, uh, hats, just making sure it's not touching our skin, being really careful about how we handle that plant, but we're really making progress on it. And I got to credit Dan for that. So John, can you give us a rough estimate of the acreage that you've covered in terms of eradicating the knot weeds from?

[02:04:05] The, the hogweed, the hogweed. Yeah. So acreage, I can't give that to you off the top of my head, but yeah, it's gone from, there were hundreds and hundreds of plants to there. There's maybe like tens of plants now. And there, there used to be many more sites. Um, now I think we have, Dan's going to get me on this, but there's only two or three sites. I think now that we, we have giant hogweed. So, uh, it's really credit,

[02:04:35] a credit to him that we've removed so much of that, that plant where it is so dangerous. It's one plant, um, that I talked about. It has negative impacts on human health. Um, that's a good example of, of that type of plant. Yeah. What was it that was bringing it into the Catskills? Was it coming in on people's boots and shoes or something else? Um, it was, as far as we know, it was just brought in by people planting it.

[02:05:04] It's exotic looking. Uh, like I said, it gets to be a big plant with these huge leaves that stick out. What, that's sorry, John, interrupt. What does it look like? Also there's giant hogweed and then there's what's, what's the other one that it looks exactly like that people mistake it for. Oh, there's cow parsnip. Cow parsnip. Yep. Yeah. So yeah. What do you want to look for in the giant hogweed is it has little without touching the stem, little purple blotches on the stem. Um,

[02:05:33] and you want to look for that along with like the white flowers and, and, uh, sometimes just the, the kind of you're probably, if you find it any, at any new location, it's probably going to be a smaller plant, but it kind of has a bulkiness to it. And it grows out of a, like a little, uh, big tuber out of the ground while parsnip is also related. So any of these plants, like you don't really want to touch them. Um, they have these,

[02:06:03] the sap that when it's exposed to sunlight could, could cause burns. The hogweed, uh, is the most severe of them, but the, the cow parsnips and the wild parsnip, um, which has the yellow flowers, uh, you'll often see it growing along the edges of the road, especially as you get to the Northern part of crisp, like. So Harry County, um, you'll see a lot of it. You don't want to touch those plants or don't want to, if you can avoid, uh,

[02:06:32] touching them, that's the best way to deal with them. Uh, if you do, only Dr. Kudish is immune to that. Yeah. I mean, probably, I guarantee he does. Yeah. So if you like, we could, we could talk to people about if they do have wild parsnip or cow parsnip in their yard, um, what to do about it. But, um, yeah, you want to be, make sure you're covered and not getting the sap on you. That's interesting. Cause I know my,

[02:07:00] my wife says I should use it as a sunscreen. Jesus. Well, you're, you're, this is like an elimination right here. Good thing. I never take her advice. Right. Yeah. Speaking of, of taking John, what about fundraising? Where do you guys get your money from? Is it all donations? You get some state money. What's supporting the good work you're doing. Yeah. At, at crisp where we're relatively lucky that we're, a lot of our funding is coming from the New York state environmental

[02:07:29] protection fund. Uh, and it's administered by New York state department of environmental conservation. Uh, so that's where a lot of our funding is from. We also have, uh, funding from the New York city, department of environmental protection to work at the Ashokan rural trail and do a project there. Uh, we have some funding from the Sullivan County planning department, um, to do work at what's going to be called Calicoon riverside park along the

[02:07:59] Delaware. And we're, and we're supported by, and the cat skill center is supported by our members, uh, and, and our, our donors. They're providing all the support that we need office space, uh, and our admin. Uh, so the cat skill center center itself is a nonprofit that needs, uh, donations funding from people who care about the cat skills and want to make sure that the cat skills are protected. So, uh,

[02:08:29] thanks for bringing that up. I really appreciate it. Well, yeah. And I'm, I'm a big fan of the cat skill center. I send them at least two checks a year because I appreciate the work they do. And I also acknowledge that I do not have to buy a season's pass to go hike in the cat skills. So, right. Yeah. Instead of buying a day ticket, a season's pass or a club membership to hike in the cat skills. I, I send some money to, um, the cat skill center and, uh,

[02:08:59] the Mike Kudish forest preserve. I've sent money to them and other organizations, but some, somewhat on the same way, the podcast does as well. Yeah. Don't forget to mention that, Ted. Cause, cause Stosh is all about giving back to the cats and speaking about giving back to the cats. What about volunteer opportunities? Are there any for our listeners to volunteer with crisp and, and go out and do either some field work or other work with you guys? definitely.

[02:09:28] We often have volunteer events at the cat skill visitor center in Mount tremper that's managed by the cat skill center. Um, we do a lot of programming there. I mentioned the Ashok and real trail. We'll be doing eight, uh, volunteer work days at the Ashok and real trail. We'll start out on earth day this year, uh, removing invasive species. And we'll be doing that, uh, for the next few weeks after that.

[02:09:55] And then we'll be planting native tree species and we'll go from earth day until the middle of June, at least. And sometimes we'll have some volunteer work days after that, uh, in August, September. September. So yeah, there's a lot of opportunities. I'm sure we'll be posting more on our website. The, the, the Chris website is catskillinvasives.org. Uh,

[02:10:21] and you can always look to our events page there and, and that will tell you what's coming up in terms of volunteer events. So if I signed up for, um, one of these volunteer events, such as the removal styled event, what, what should I expect? What, what do I need to bring with me? How deep into it am I going to get? What would somebody expect when they're showing up for that type of event volunteer event? Yeah. Uh,

[02:10:50] we would provide the information beforehand that they would need in order to go out and be prepared. Um, but the site that we're working at, at the Shoken real trail, uh, one of the sites, the one where we're doing the planting is kind of wet. You'd want to bring some rubber boots or be wearing rubber boots. We talk to people about tick awareness. Unfortunately, there's also a relationship between invasive species and ticks and Lyme disease.

[02:11:20] For instance, when you get really dense monocultures of Japanese barberry, they've found that there's a higher incidence of the white footed mice that live under those habitats where the humidity is controlled by this dense layer of, uh, Japanese barberry that encourages more ticks also to be living in the leaves and in the, this environment. Um,

[02:11:46] and those ticks are more likely to have Lyme disease that could be spread to any of us. So it's really important. And I would encourage anybody who's going outside for any reason, um, just to be aware of ticks and, and, and take the necessary precautions. But when you're out there, what we would do is we would train you to, uh, identify a series of invasive plants, um, that we would be removing, talk to you about best management practices.

[02:12:16] A lot of people that show up at our volunteer events, they're not as interested. Well, they are interested in where we're working, but they're also interested in maybe their backyard. They have Japanese barberry and they want to make sure that they're identifying it. Right. And how do you best remove it? And what do you need to, to do in order to remove it? So we talk to people about, um, best management practices, how to use the tools that we're using out in the field, try to make it fun for people,

[02:12:46] share some knowledge, uh, and, and, and hopefully people come back over time and, and, um, you get to this feeling of satisfaction. If you're working at the same site and you're removing invasives over time, I think it's, for me, it's really satisfying. And I, I know it is for a lot of our, our volunteers. They really get into it. Yeah. I, I volunteered with, uh, the Catskill trail crew last September. And I gotta say, I, I walked away from that, uh,

[02:13:16] one day trail maintenance event with kind of a high that lasted at least a week. And I promise to get back at least once this year. And maybe I'm going to do that with Matt Smith and the Catskill trails crew. And I'll hook up with you guys and, you know, go to war with some invasives. But before I go back to Stosh, I got a really, really burning question. I think you're the guy that knows the answer.

[02:13:42] What is your go-to spray or whatever for ticks? What do you put on when you're going into those high concentration areas of deer ticks? Yeah. So I treat my clothes with permethrin every six weeks and I, uh, make sure that they're well treated. Um, and, and that has worked for me. We,

[02:14:08] we also have these tick gaiters that we use sometimes in the field. Those seem to work well. Uh, but yeah, for, I always wear long pants. I'm wearing the long sleeve shirt and the outside of my clothes are treated with permethrin. And, and, and, and that's the best that I can do. I think. I agree. You don't use any spray other than the permethrin. Yeah. I don't either. Same.

[02:14:38] Yeah. Not, not usually. Um, if the black flies or the mosquitoes were bad, I might use something, but, uh, otherwise, yeah. I mean, tick borne disease isn't, there are a lot of diseases that are really serious and, and they're not something to fool around with. So, yeah, definitely. Yeah. It definitely is something to take seriously when, when, because we're off trail, we're,

[02:15:06] we're trying to remove shrubs and, uh, in dense vegetation sometimes then, um, yeah, just making sure that we're being careful. So we, we are last episode, we had this, uh, Dr. Gates on, uh, to tell us about climate change. And one of the things he discussed was with the, uh, warmer summer season, the longer seasons of warm weather, that it's a kind of a longer, um,

[02:15:36] active environment for insects like Texas. Is that true? Is he pulling our leg or is there truth behind that? Oh yeah, definitely. So, um, there, there are some insects and animal species that are able to take care of that. And related to invasives, you can see it in a lot of the invasive plants, for instance, uh, that, you know, spring comes earlier and, and fall is later in the season. And so,

[02:16:06] uh, you'll see that these invasive plants will leaf out earlier in the spring. So they're taking advantage of all that sunlight before the native species are even putting their leaves on. Um, you, you see a lot of what's called plasticity and, and some of these invasive plants is that they're able to take advantage of a changing climate. So, um, those warmer springs or warmer falls, uh, they can definitely take advantage of that.

[02:16:35] Plus they might be more able to withstand drier conditions. There are native plants can, or wetter conditions when we get those in any extreme weather events that we have. Like blow downs or hurricanes where there's a lot of trees, for instance, that might be knocked down in a storm. The invasives might be there to, to take advantage of that. There's also a,

[02:17:01] a more subtle way that some invasives have been observed to take advantage of climate. And the changing climate, sometimes there's species that are just kind of sitting there. They're not really being invasive. They, they seem like they're just kind of hanging out, but as the climate changes, they'll start to spread and take advantage of that. Those are called sleeper species. Uh, so those are something else that we,

[02:17:29] I lay awake at night thinking about what species are out there that I should be dealing with right now before they start. Monster dreams. So do we have any of those, uh, active in the Catskills or, you know, waking up in the foreseeable future? Uh, I guess we'll see. Uh, yeah, I, I, I think that I would say we're, we're relatively lucky in some ways in the Catskills for the plants,

[02:17:58] at least a lot of the invasive plants that we have. They're most abundant in these areas that were 150 years ago. They were farmed. They were open. Maybe they planted Barbary there around the house and it spread throughout the fields that were there. And they, everything kind of overgrew, but except for the, these invasive insects that have really spread over the Catskills, like the Emerald Ash Borer, um, we're seeing it with the spotted lanternfly.

[02:18:28] And like I said, the beach leaf disease, but the plants have been a little bit slower to, to move into some of our areas. And like I said, when we started out, fragmentation is, is a big part of that. Like, uh, the, we have intact forests that are resilient to some degree to invasion. And if we can keep them that way, keep the forest healthy, um, then they could be more resilient to these invasives over time. Interesting.

[02:18:58] Interesting. Yeah. I mean, uh, you know, we, we, you talk about all these, these invasion cities. So when we get involved in stuff like that, will you guys be at the, uh, outdoor expo on June 14th? Yeah. Yeah. I'm usually, uh, doing the gear sale so you can find me there. So, um, but yeah, if anybody wants to come by, uh, to the, the great outdoor expo, uh,

[02:19:27] then I'll be happy to chat with them about invasive species. So why don't you pick up some stuff there? We have a lot of things that are donated and we sell, and we're helping to raise money for the Catskill center. And you can get a nice piece of equipment or a jacket or a shirt. And, and, um, we, we get to have some cash on hand. So it's a win-win for everybody. So I just signed up for the IMAP invasives. That's pretty cool stuff. Oh, great. I will plug that into the,

[02:19:56] the, the show notes. Do you have anything else you want to plug in to, uh, the last second that you want to plug in? Yeah. Uh, the next week, February 24th at 5 30 PM, Dan Snyder, who I had mentioned is, uh, doing a winter surveys for forest pests. He's going to focus on spotted lanternfly and beach leaf disease. So you could sign up for that on our website. It's scottskillinvasives.org. And as I mentioned before,

[02:20:25] we'll also have those Ashokan Rail Trail volunteer work days coming up. We'll have more stuff as, as the season comes on. Uh, so there's lots of opportunities to, to come and hear what we have to say to, to volunteer with us and, and help out, feel good about the work that you're doing in the cat skills. Yeah. And you know, John, I will, uh, admit that you guys should probably do some zoom sessions like this to identify what we can spot out there for IMAP. And, you know,

[02:20:55] to be like, Hey, you know, this is what you're looking like for on a beast tree or an emerald ash bore or stuff like that. That's what Dan's doing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Just, I mean, I would do that every like, like month or so just to get people engaged and, you know, get people like with knowledge to, to identify this and to attack us as soon as possible. Yeah, definitely. Um, yeah, we would like to do more. Like I said, there's only a few of us working. So, uh,

[02:21:26] uh, anyway, we can get the word out and we appreciate you guys. Yeah. Helping to spread the word. Well, I'm glad you got to join us tonight. It was, it was a fantastic chat. I learned a little bit more, more about invasive species. And once again, the, I guarantee the IMAP. Hopefully we can get that to our like four or five listeners that we have here. Yeah. I'm going to check it out. So yeah, it's worthwhile. Yeah. It's really helpful for us. And I'd encourage anybody to, uh, just sign up for it. And if they have any questions,

[02:21:55] we could help them troubleshoot. Uh, if anything comes along, uh, or if they have anything they want to help with identifying. Yeah. So last question, John post hike, bruising bites, where do you like to go to eat after doing this, uh, removal of invasive species and stuff to the fulfill your day to make the day worthwhile. Hmm. That's a good question. I like to go to Brio's. Um, that's a good spot. I usually end up coming home.

[02:22:23] I would say after we're doing these work days, but, uh, yeah, there's lots of places to go to. Yeah. Brio's is, is, uh, a big top getter of our, of our podcast. I would say Brio's and Snyder Snyder is the best. So, yeah, Snyder's is more in keeping with my budget. Correct. I can't afford fancy pizza slices. But it's, it's so good though. It's so good. So I just want to big, give a big shout out to the monthly supporters and monthly sponsors.

[02:22:53] Really appreciate you guys supporting and sponsoring the show. Uh, thank you to everyone who is still listening. A hundred and seven, seven, 160 episodes. And John is with us talking about invasive species, the cat skills, how we can help and how they have helped take out, eliminate this stuff as much as they can so far. So let's all get together. Let's do what we can to help John out and to help catskill center out. And, let's get this stuff out of here. So our catskills can be as good as ever. How about that? So,

[02:23:23] yeah. So John, thank you for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it. Hope you have a good night and, uh, let's get together in the future. I hope to see you soon. Uh, maybe on a, like a future expedition. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to do that. Thank you, Stash. And thanks, Ted. I really appreciate chatting with you both and, um, hope to see you out there somewhere. Yes, indeed, John. Thank you. Yeah. Have a good night. Yep. Take care. See you guys.

[02:23:54] Hi everyone. I just want to thank you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed the show, subscribe and throw down a smooth review on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or any podcast platform that you use. You can also check daily updates of the podcast, hikes, hiking news, and local news on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the official website of the show. Remember this,

[02:24:23] you got to just keep on living in the Catskills, man. L-I-V-I-N. Wicked, wicked, wicked. Wicked. Wicked.