ABOUT TOM
Tom is a retired EMT & still is an EMT (volunteer). He serves small forest owners to get started. He has decades in the woods that is supplanted by field training in Silviculture, Tree Logger Certified; Best Management Practices; Timber Stand Improvement; & wildlife habitat improvement

Tom is using this “last 3rd of his life to do things he enjoys, make some folks happy along the path, learn new things, and enjoy family, friends, and music. Hopefully, he will make a few bucks along the way to buy food.”

Mike is a retired teacher from Margaretville Central School. He taught Earth Science, Environmental Science, Science Research in the High School, Driver Education and several elementary and junior high courses over his 33-year career. In 1988 he was selected as the New York State Conservation Teacher of the Year by the New York State Board of Soil and Water Districts. A life-long resident of Delaware County, Mike is an avid birder and has studied the changes in the avian community over the years.

As a small woodlot landowner, he has learned to manage his property to better enhance wildlife, timber quality and maple syrup production. Mike has been an active volunteer Fireman for nearly 45 years and was an Executive officer for most of that time. He was a member of the Town of Middletown Zoning Board of Appeals and, later, a Planning Board member and Chair. Besides birding, Mike gardens, makes Maple syrup, cuts his own firewood and does woodworking. Currently, he is harvesting trees from his property and preparing his own lumber via a bandsaw mill on the property.

• Bowhunter Magazine
• Traditional Bowhunting Magazine
• Archery World Magazine
• Professional Bowhunting Society Magazine
• Bear Hunting Magazine 

Joel is also a Senior Member of the Pope & Young Club; Life Member #9 of the Professional Bowhunters Society; Life Member #95 of the NY Bowhunters; Life Member of the NJ Foundation of Sportsman’s Clubs; Founder, past-President, & member of the Traditional Archers of NJ; Past-President of the United Bowhunters of NJ; & Past-President & Life Member of the Bergen Bowmen Archery Club.

About Carl Grocholl
Carl is the Owner of Grocholl Landscaping and Catskill Mt. Quality Whitetails. He designs, installs, manages food plots, and other aspects on property to manage wildlife. Carl is an avid bowhunter and outdoorsman.

We welcome garden groups and individuals to come to visit Hortus Arboretum and Botanical Gardens! The gardens have been growing for over 20 years, with several specific collections such as the Chinese Garden, Native Woodland Garden and Japanese shade garden, in addition to a large collection of unusual edibles and hardy cacti.

We have the most diverse selection of plants in Ulster County! Hortus Arboretum exists as a ‘Living Textbook’ of plants that can be grown in the Hudson Valley."

Former Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives, an organization that became a model for effective public interest advocacy.

Paul has a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and master’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Montana. He spends his Saturdays and Sundays brick oven baking, bicycling, and hiking the parks and trails of the Hudson River Valley with his wife Zoe and their three rascally children. Paul joined PTNY in March 2023, succeeding the legendary Robin Dropkin.

As a small woodlot landowner, he has learned to manage his property to better enhance wildlife, timber quality and maple syrup production. Mike has been an active volunteer Fireman for nearly 45 years and was an Executive officer for most of that time. He was a member of the Town of Middletown Zoning Board of Appeals and, later, a Planning Board member and Chair. Besides birding, Mike gardens, makes Maple syrup, cuts his own firewood and does woodworking. Currently, he is harvesting trees from his property and preparing his own lumber via a bandsaw mill on the property.

Description

Vasiliy Lakoba is Director of Research and Restoration with The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF). TACF's mission of restoring the American chestnut tree has been driving diverse approaches to establishing disease resistant trees throughout the eastern U.S. for over 40 years. Vasiliy's work with TACF spans applied tree improvement and evaluation, species reintroduction, and public engagement. He holds a PhD from Virginia Tech and his prior work includes forest understory restoration, invasion ecology, species distribution modeling, and ecophysiology. Vasiliy serves as Board Vice President of the North American Invasive Species Management Association and is passionate about nonprofit models of long-term environmental conservation.

Gary is the former owner of Fruitful Furnishings Sawmill & current owner of Gary Mead Gallery in Margaretville, Delaware County. He was born & raised on a dairy farm in New Kingston, Town of Middletown, Delaware County.

Jesse Meyer has worked in his family’s business since he was young; going to the tannery with his father Karl on days off from school continued through high school and even during his college breaks. After graduating with a BFA from S.U.N.Y. New Paltz, he planned on getting as far away from the tannery as he could, or at least moving to NYC to try his hand at being an artist. While working on long term plans, he continued working at the tannery, and in his off hours working on his artwork and his research in animal skins and possible applications in his artwork. 

Using his artistry background, Jesse revived and refined the age-old process of hand-making parchment (parchment defined as a raw animal skin that has had the hair and flesh removed, then stretched and dried under tension).

Jesse rebranded the Richard E. Meyer & Sons Tannery into Pergamena Artisanal Parchments and Leathers, taking the name Pergamena from the Latin word for parchment.

Matt Ross is NDA’s Senior Director of Conservation, and he has been with the organization since 2006 earning several promotions during his tenure. His prior positions include Director and Assistant Director of Conservation, Conservation Coordinator, Certification Programs Manager, and New England/Canada and Northeast Regional Director. Before coming to NDA, he was a project manager with Moreno Forestry Associates and a wildlife technician with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Massachusetts and master’s at the University of New Hampshire. He is a Certified Wildlife Biologist® and Licensed Forester. 

 Matt grew up in Hyde Park, New York and currently lives in Saratoga Springs. He is an NDA Life Member, Brothers-Hamilton Society member, and longtime Branch volunteer. He and his wife, Sadie, are proud parents of two daughters who he loves sharing his outdoor passion with.

About M.R. O'Connor: M. R. O’Connor is a journalist who writes about the politics and ethics of science, technology and conservation. Her work has appeared online in The Atavist, Slate, Foreign Policy, The New Yorker, Nautilus, UnDark and Harper’s.  Her first book, Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things (St. Martin’s Press, 2015) and was one of Library Journal and Amazon’s Best Books of The Year. Her second book, Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World (St. Martin’s Press, 2019) is an exploration of navigation traditions, neuroscience, and the diversity of human relationships to space, time and memory. Its writing was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan’s Program for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology, & Economics. She recently wrote a book called Ignition (September 2023, Bold Type Books) on fire ecology and prescribed burning, for which she became certified as a wildland firefighter.

In 2008/2009, O’Connor was a reporter for The Sunday Times, an English-language newspaper in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her investigative reporting on topics like disappearances in Sri Lanka’s civil war, global agriculture trade in Haiti, and American development enterprises in Afghanistan have been funded by institutions such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Phillips Foundation, and The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund. For a long time, she made her bread and butter as a stringer covering crime, courts, and breaking news in New York City for publications such as The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, and covered the criminal justice beat for the online investigative site The New York World.  She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and was a 2016/17 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her partner, the screenwriter Bryan Parker, and their two sons.

Using his artistry background, Jesse revived and refined the age-old process of hand-making parchment (parchment defined as a raw animal skin that has had the hair and flesh removed, then stretched and dried under tension).

Jesse rebranded the Richard E. Meyer & Sons Tannery into Pergamena Artisanal Parchments and Leathers, taking the name Pergamena from the Latin word for parchment.

Every Third Wednesday we have Wood Artist, Gary Mead on the show to discuss a native tree, or something else forest-related. This month we'll be discussing the maple tree, both red and sugar.

Every Third Wednesday we have Wood Artist, Gary Mead on the show to discuss a native tree, or something else forest-related. This month we'll be discussing the maple tree, both red and sugar.

Paul Misko has been hiking in the Catskills since childhood. Over the years he has learned much about the Catskill forest, and the human history within it. Though his main focus is Woodland Valley, near Phoenicia, he has done research throughout the whole Catskill region.

In 2009 he founded the Catskill 4000 Club, a small hiking group which focuses on history themed hikes and events. He has written articles for Kaatskill Life, and the Catskill Mountain Region Guide. He regularly gives talks on Catskill history, American history, and John Burroughs. He shares his research both in person, and on WIOX radio's "From the Forest."