Cornell Cooperative Extension will hold two one-hour Forest Connect webinars on Gardening the Beech: Balancing Two Options in Management on May 19th at noon and 7 pm.
Many landowners and natural resources managers wonder what to do about American beech and the dense root sucker understories that developed in the wake of tree mortality related to Beech Bark Disease.
Beech suckers interfere with establishment and development of tree seedlings and many herbs. They reduce ecological diversity, diminish wildlife habitat and long-term timber production, and affect many other ecosystem benefits.
Those losses suggest a strategy to reduce or remove beech from the forest. Yet many birds and mammals use beechnuts as a key food, and beechnut abundance influences wildlife population dynamics. That recommends for retention and enhancement of nut-producing beech trees.
So what to do? These webinars by SUNY-ESF professor Ralph Nyland and Stacy McNulty suggests a compromise management strategy, based on techniques for selecting and managing resistant and tolerant trees and clones, while reducing susceptible ones.
To take part in one of these webinar, obtain your registration ID via: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5IRFqn7oSYm5D-Vyqb8-3Q
If prompted for a password use “Cornell”.