About Mike Lynch

Mike Lynch is a multimedia reporter for the Adirondack Explorer. He can be reached at mike@adirondackexplorer.org. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter

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  1. nathan says

    My grandmother used to take me as a kid and we would collect Beechnuts and roast. She used them in pie (think of pecan pie, but Beech nut), she used as filler with dough and honey or brown sugar and just eat nuts.
    I have hunted Beechnut patches my whole life harvesting free range partidge, squirrels and even bears.
    It has been crazy with all these imported deseases and pests, in my lifetime we have lost black walnuts, butternuts, that we used to collect and roast for food and animals galore eating, we used to take road trips south and collect bushels of chestnuts, roasted and even canned.
    Gone are the great Elm trees providing beauty and shade. We need to find better ways to import food or stop importing food. The blights, funguses, insects inported are causing billions in losses from tree removal, loss of habitat, diversity, foods, ect.
    Examples Chicago had to remove almost every tree in chicago because of 100,000 Elm trees dying in a mere decade, NYC similiar. whole industries such as American chestnuts gone, a whole business and holiday tradition wiped away.
    Black walnuts and butternuts fed people and a large number of animals and even farm animals.
    We talk of Global warming constantly, how it destroys the environment, species dying out, but the effects of imported pestulance has been nearly as bad as dozens of common trees have died off, even importing west nile that almost wiped out crows across the country and many other bird populations having dramatic losses when already under so much trouble. Is a global economy so great when we are destroying our natural resources?

  2. Larry G. Orvis says

    We have been planting red oak in patch cuts for 30 years and removing the beech that are diseased, retaining softmast like serviceberry, 3 species of cherry, wild apple, highbush cranberry, rubus, mountain ash and hardmast like beaked hazelnut, hardhack, blue beech, etc.
    We did plantings with acorns planted in fall or spring or from our own grown seedlings started in my basement. We did plantings with 6 foot high tubes, in well drained soils, southerly or westerly exposure, fertilized with coffee grounds and kept competing vegetation from shading the tube. Started producing acorns in 25 years. Google ” The Morrison Place” Camels Hump State Forest in Vermont State Route 17 in Starksboro, also on Google Map or Earth.

  3. Boreas says

    Indeed, another damn shame.

    I agree with many other scientists that humans are witnessing first hand – and helping to drive – the “Sixth Extinction”. Declining flora/fauna/fungal diversity makes for loss of resilience in ecosystems. This will be the first time humans can attempt to document an extinction event day-by-day – assuming there will be someone around to read the paper. This “event” may make the Younger Dryas look mild by comparison. I would like to come back in 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 and 1,000,000 years to see how Nature deals with it over time – as she surely will.

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