In more bad Fed news, the BLM canceled grazing permits for American Prairie’s bison program. It’s bad for a number of reasons, the worst is that bison *still* aren’t managed as wildlife. Why do does AP need to buy permits to run bison?!? They should be everywhere www.outdoorlife.com/conservation...

I’m 2/3 on catching flying squirrels in the house. My wife thinks this is something I should be 3/3 on…

Read Death of the Great Lakes

You ever research someone you hate them and every detail you learn about them confirms that? That’s how I feel about Walter Bitterlich—was a Nazi, fought on the Eastern Front, and did so much more but all that gets ignored cause he invented the relascope podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

Well…… That wasn’t good

Me to my daughter: this is what we trained for! The training

In the least surprising news….

This isn’t that wrong. Stratified sampling with fixed area plots is the correct a for a low destiny tundra forest, but there are a few important missteps. A pace is two steps (you count based on a foot, so right-left-right is one pace) and the tree ID is wrong. Most of the confers are Norway spruce

Hey, so this is bad. Do not do this. Throw the meat out and bleach everything it touched

When I see basal area in metric

Finishing up the bad place today (80% of the overstory is tree of heaven). I got a nice little treat— to kill a big paulownia

It seems like my chimney isn’t as sealed as I thought it was. This southern flying squirrel got in the house, but I managed to catch it before the cats. It was released, largely, unharmed

Sedges have edges, rushes are round, and grasses have nodes all the way to the ground—that’s the only grass id you need

Look what decided to show up to my invasive plant workshop! It really drove home the importance of the workshop

I collected and gave away a bunch of native plants at the Great Insect Fair because insects grow on plants

We’re getting swamp white oaks and chestnut oaks started! We’re in a drought so I’m not too confident in their fertility…

I just want to know how the new fire agency, which doesn’t have a budget or congressional approval,suppose to work. How’s HR and transferring staff between departments and agencies suppose to go? There’s no money, so is USFS just going to pay its crew that now have DOI patch?

Only a few weeks old and she’s already taking out spotted laternfly. I couldn’t be more proud of my little girl

I finally found where the SLG on this property was coming from

“As human-driven climate change makes winters shorter, ticks are spending less time hibernating and have more active months when they can hitch rides on animals and people. Sometimes the ticks carry themselves — and diseases — to new parts of the country.”

If anyone wants a nice read, I’m in the paper talking about the inflection point in PA’s forest www.inquirer.com/news/inq2/be...

Just a few invasives

Spotted laternfly is such a flexible insect! Yesterday, I saw it feeding on at least a dozen species from tree of heaven to white oak to pokeweed

The illegal Iran strike cost at least 170 million dollars. In the 2025 budget, that’d cover 71% of the Forest Service’s Capital Improvement costs or 48% of Research. In the 2026 budget, that’d cover 216% of improvement and restart research which was ended for budget savings…

First SLF of the year, and it’s not even on tree of heaven. It was on a multiflora rose. Don’t worry I killed everything in this picture

A lawn hates to see me coming—I’m prepping this for conversion to a native meadow

Here’s my new record tree of heaven! It was so big I threw a few root hacks on it

Big herp day! It’s so fun seeing these dudes and making good habitat for all the critters in the woods

This week, I part of a really fun multi-institution event where we trained grad about extension! Teaching people about extension, doing some extension events, and seeing old friends was such a great time!

Class is over and I’m back in the field! The first project for the summer is killing invasives and getting control of this fern. Once we have everything in shape, which will take two years, we’ll plant roughly dozen native tree and shrub species

Do you like wine? Do like drinking wine and learning about wine? Do you want to know about how climate change is impacting wine? I’ve got the webinar for you! extension.psu.edu/climate-chan...

Some colleagues and I are writing a tree ID and I’m SO proud of how it’s coming! If you need a tree ID book for the Mid-Atlantic, I’ll have one for you next June

Who knew CWD had lobbyists!?!

The CEO of Colossal is really posting through it. He forgot (or doesn’t know) that science is built by consensus and he SHOULD be concerned about critiques from the scientific community. Posting a 2011 meme instead of data is telling

This whole “dire wolf” thing is just Silicone Valley folks doing the Torture Nexus meme, but with Jurassic Park. You know can tell they’re not serious because they started with a long extinct species that had no habitat, didn’t use its DNA, and are trying to use phenotypic species definition!!

Invasive plants like this Japanese barberry are the first bud out and the last to lose their leaves this phenomenon is called extended leaf phenology. If you see a plant leafing out before anything else, it’s probably invasive

My wife was working on an NIH grant studying how to improve PReP use in LGBTQ communities until yesterday when it was canceled by DODGE. The letter canceling the grant was written with a deep misunderstand of science and public health, as well blatant homophobia

If you paint hardwood cabinets, you are my enemy. So much time, effort, and skill went into growing those trees, sawing the lumber, and crafting them —you need to see and appreciate the wood! Don’t cover it cheap grey/white paint

Fun stuff from @taskandpurpose.com taskandpurpose.com/tech-tactics...

Looks like Europe is taking the trade war seriously. Hardwood markets are going to take big hit, especially following the loss of the Chinese market. Casks, used in the aging of wine/spirts, are specifically called out, so I’m curious what the long tail impacts of this will be

We had a really fun guest lecture today about the Champion Tree Program! I’m so happy to see how Jaq is growing the program and helping find some of the biggest trees in America!!

Oooofff. Well, RIP to the US forest products industry

There’s a new EO about increasing timber production from federal land. It’s just culture war nonsense. It’s not possible to increase production when the harvesting staff got fired, the FS can’t buy gas; seedlings; or paint, and we’re doing trade wars with our trading partners

With all this bad news, I have a bit of good news: I’ll be part of two events at the Ukraine Institute in New York City this April about the environmental/social impact of the war in Ukraine. There will be a few talks on April 6th and a half day events on the 22nd

I had a great day in the woods! It was 50 and the oak regeneration was so good that I had to mark some red oaks to release other oaks! Usually, I struggle to find adequate oak regeneration, but good silviculture pays off!

A fun side effect of the new federal credit limit is NRCS cannot pay for completed projects because they can’t get to sites to verify that the work has been done

I mean who needs clean air and water anyway? www.reuters.com/world/us/epa...

I’m running a series of webinars on estate planning and one of the presenters just laid down a powerful statistic on the importance of planning: African Americans landownership in the Southeast has declined by 98%—largely driven by heirs property/inheritance issues,