FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Historic Cemeteries of the Catskills and their Ghosts

or the Biological Inheritance of our Catskill Forests

October 24, 2017 ARKVILLE, NY — The Catskill forest is dense with history. There are plow-lines to be found, as well as burial grounds, stone walls and plants (once precious, now feral) — all are ghosts of generations past.

Saturday, October 28, naturalist John Thompson will lead a hike of the Kelly Hollow Loop and search for traces of past uses of the land and markers of previous human existence. The walk is the final offering of the Catskill Center’s 2017 Exclusive Member Programming Series.

Says Thompson, "The Catskill forests exist as a biological legacy of the people that came before us and that narrative remains in our landscape today.

"We will observe the traces of what our predecessors harvested, what they nurtured, what they protected, and how they used the landscape.

"The Catskills are always changing — it is only through understanding this biological legacy that we will be able to best protect these forests into the future."

One human generation exists in the Catskills and passes a landscape, forever altered by their presence, on to the next.

The walk will begin at the Kelly (Sleepy) Hollow Trailhead at 10am. The Loop is 3.3 miles. Please register for this pro- gram by contacting  jmogelever@catskillcenter.org or call 845-586-2611.

For more information please visit catskillcenter.org/events.

John Thompson is the Coordinator of the Catskill Regional Species Partnership and has over twenty years of experi- ence collaborating with scientists and land stewards throughout southeastern New York State promoting science-based management.

John also serves as Secretary of the Natural History Section of the Ecological Society of America.