Kaatscast: the Catskills Podcast

Nature Episodes

Landscaping in Zone 5 with Zone4 Landscaper Mel Bellar
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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Six Ticks: in the Lyme Light
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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Post-Hibernation with Leslie T. Sharpe
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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The Bluebird Chronicles: A Catskills Romance
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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Woodstock NY Pollinator Pathway
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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Things that Sting with professor Justin O. Schmidt
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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Catskill Forests, Trees, Hemlocks
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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