About Zachary Matson

Zachary Matson has been an environmental reporter for the Explorer since October 2021. He is focused on the many issues impacting water and the people, plants and wildlife that rely on it in the Adirondack Park. Zach worked at daily newspapers in Missouri, Arizona and New York for nearly a decade, most recently working as the education reporter for six years at the Daily Gazette in Schenectady.

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  1. Nathan says

    Very disheartening to think of how much the lakes in the Adirondacks have declined in the last 50 years.i remember in the 70’s when a mere 10-15 minutes of fishing could produce a beautiful fish for dinner, whether a trout stream or a bass/pike in a lake. Then acid rain changed everything, that lakes i had fished for decades suddenly the millions of frogs were just gone!! the fish were gone, the roar of croaking was quiet, the loons left. It has taken yet more decades to have a few fish and frogs reappear, now global warming is taking even that away.
    Only people over 50 will remember when there used to be toads everwhere in the summer, so many turtles in spring in some areas you had to stop and sometimes move a few to drive by. when an hour’s fishing in a trout stream could easily fill a creel with 18-24 inch trout. walk along any water and frogs croaking, leapord frogs squeeking as they jumped. today’s reality is fish a stream all day for trout, you might not even catch a trout or see a frog or toad, or a single squeek of a jumping leapord frog. The lakes and rivers are very dead, sterile in most areas, there is maybe 99% loss of everything and much smaller size. It very much saddens me that my grandchildren and even children never will know the joy of real fishing.
    I used to love fishing, but now to sit for hours with no fish to be caught and to know what used to be, it feels scary to know how little is left of life here. To never see fire newts when there were thousands walking in spring.
    Racheal Carlson was right and it has come to be “a silent spring”, rich companies get to sell whole sale poisons and nothing is done, no matter what the enviromental cost. Atrzine scares the hell out of any knowledgeable person, but a milion pounds is poured on America, for maybe 4-5% more corn harvest! we spread millions of pounds of poison on our lawns, so that a dandilion will not bloom? or a crab grass not grow? or that insects should not crawl? That children get to run in a sterile lawn soaked in insecticide, herbicide, fungicide and we wonder why children get cancer?
    We have dumped massive amounts of poison for close to 6 decades on our growing food, on our lawns. herbicides along every road, railroad, fences, powerlines, you get the idea, insecticides on our lawn, garden, around our house, even inside our house, your children crawl in poison since they first crawled, then they eat it, breath it, they even drink it from the milk, water or the very plastic bottle it is inside. 8 billion hungry mouths and growing…eating, poisoning, and sh*tting in our only bed!!
    Zachery thank you for an article that gets word to more people, but sadly not enough people, not loud enough and profits are first.
    Outdoorsman of the Adirondacks have lived and seen the effects that result and 90% of the population is so removed from nature they see nothing, Companies care about profit and spread lies and disinformation to ensurer they get profits like “Bayer” and “DeSantose” or “Scott’s lawn products”, they are ensuring your children will have much higher likelyhood of cancer, that animals will die off. oops i am off to get my can of “Lysol” and “Raid” to spray my house, my grandkids are moving!

    • Boreas says

      Nathan,

      I totally agree! Chalking up widespread species and diversity decline to climate change is literally a chemical smokescreen. Compare the billions poured into climate change research and remediation to the perhaps millions dedicated to environmental chemical hazards to ecosystems – much of which is carried out by Big Chemical themselves. Dubious at best.

      Another unrelated consideration is simply the homogenization of the globe. Inattentiveness to spreading disease and organisms around the world is causing great – often unseen and unnoticed – damage to ecosystems. There is very little currently preventing this. White-nose syndrome, Emerald Ash Borer, Dutch Elm Disease, Chestnut blight, are only a few well-known ecosystem destroyers that have occurred in my lifetime. Continental isolation helps species to diversify and become more robust. Turn the globe into one big ecosystem and it is much more easily damaged because of lack of diversity.

      The last 500 or so years of humans traipsing around the Earth may have become its undoing by weakening species diversity. Add unrelenting climate change and chemical destruction to the equation and the sum does not look hopeful.

  2. Joe Kozlina says

    Great replies.I agree completely. I just dont think enough people are listening and if they are what really do we do about it. Take the Adirondacks for instance. The governing bodies are still doing studies on the effects of salt on roads, loss of habitat in all areas. allowing atv”s in the forests, larger and larger ones, building more high end condos and housing for the rich and famous, calling logging “forest conservation” and believing it. With this mind set just in the adirondacks how would we get any message across to the masses?
    Sure the wildlife and habitat will die, No need for more studies. All the studies show the death of our planet.
    I dont know what to do to get this one park to understand another way of doing business. I do know this way is not working.
    I think we all see the writing on the wall. We have past the tipping point. I am old enough to have done my own “study” on the health of the planet as I can tell you all have too, With no grant money, just my 65 plus years, my conclusion is it is terminal. And not far off.
    I know, a radical conclusion. I am one of the few that will say it. I havent given up but I wont go on with my head in the sand thinking things will get better.

  3. David Bower says

    I didn’t see anywhere close to comment, but what an incredibly beautiful baby! Many congratulations to you both! And if I may make a suggestion, get a frontpack, and use it as much as possible. My daughter is nearly 21, and I still treasure the many times I carried her that way, both turned in to my chest, and later, facing out to see the world. It’s one of the most wonderful child inventions ever. I wish y’all both a world of happiness with Bryer.

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