Kaatscast: the Catskills Podcast

Nature Episodes

Aug. 1, 2023

Leaving No Trace: Outdoor Ethics with Moe Lemire

In July, a small group of hikers was apprehended and ticketed for leaving two Adirondack chairs at the summit of Slide Mountain. Those hikers' actions, while misguided, may have been good-intentioned. But they fly in the face...

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July 4, 2023

Wave Farm

Wave Farm –– in Greene County's Acra, NY –– is a 29-acre campus that's not only home to WGXC 90.7 FM, but a hub for terrestrial radio, transmission arts, and resident artists. Hear from Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter ...

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June 6, 2023

Forest Therapy with Lara Land

The Catskills naturalist John Burroughs once wrote, "The place to observe nature is where you are; the walk to take to-day is the walk you took yesterday. You will not find just the same things: both the observed and the …

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May 23, 2023

Landscaping in Zone 5 with Zone4 Landscaper Mel Bellar

When Mel Bellar established his Andes, NY landscape design company, the Catskills were considered "zone 4" on the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Thanks (?) to climate change and warmer winters, the region is now solidly in "z...

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May 24, 2022

Six Ticks: in the Lyme Light

If a tick bites you in the woods, and it's free of disease-causing pathogens, does it matter? We wanted to know how many of our Catskills ticks are pathogenetic, so we sent 6 of them to the Thangamani Lab at …

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April 26, 2022

Post-Hibernation with Leslie T. Sharpe

In 2020, Leslie T. Sharpe came to Silver Hollow Audio to narrate The Quarry Fox: and other Critters of the Wild Catskills , available at Libro.fm or wherever you get your audiobooks. Then the pandemic hit. Two years later, sh...

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April 12, 2022

The Bluebird Chronicles: A Catskills Romance

The winter/spring 2022 issue of Appalachia , "America's longest-running journal of mountaineering and conservation," features an essay by Catskills writer Leslie T. Sharpe about our little blue harbinger of spring: the bluebi...

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April 13, 2021

Woodstock NY Pollinator Pathway

Honey bees aren't the only species facing serious population declines. Wild bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, and other insects, plus birds, bats, and amphibians are losing natural habitat and being forced out by invasive sp...

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Sept. 29, 2020

Things that Sting with professor Justin O. Schmidt

This week: bees! wasps! hornets! yellowjackets! (and other things that sting) with special guest Justin O. Schmidt, research biologist at Southwestern Biological Institute, adjunct faculty at University of Arizona’s departmen...

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April 28, 2020

Catskill Forests, Trees, Hemlocks

Forest historian Michael Kudish talks trees and forest composition in the Stony Clove, bridging Ulster and Greene Counties. Then, a conversation with forest entomologist Mark Whitmore, on an invasive threat to our Catskill he...

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