Beech Tree Field Seminar

In this special course, learn about the prospects of American beech threatened by the spreading beech leaf disease, and ongoing experiments to maintain healthy beech.

“Management and Control in the Context of Beech Leaf Disease”

Registration is required but free | Register via Eventbrite
Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024 | 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

On Tuesday, October 22, New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) and the E.D. Bessey and Son company will host a field seminar in Brooks, Maine. This event is for foresters, landowners, loggers, hunters, land trust professionals and other people who care about the health of our forests to learn about the prospects for American beech under the pressure of the rapidly spreading beech leaf disease, which severely affects health and survival.

Forest pathologists Conor Mcintire and Aaron Bergdahl from the U.S. and Maine Forest Services will update participants on the current science on this disease, how it interacts with the much older introduced beech bark disease, and what experiments are ongoing to maintain some healthy beech in the landscape.

Participants will then head out the lands of E.D. Bessey and Son to learn from owners Chip and Ethan Bessey about their decade-long efforts to fight the “zombie forest:” previously mixed stands that after logging became dominated by unhealthy but persistent beech thickets. Together with emeritus professor Bob Seymour of the UMaine School of Forest Resources, the Besseys will show how they are diversifying these degraded stands with the help of silviculture, mechanical control and spot application of herbicide.

Registration for the event is required but attendance is free! NEFF will provide coffee, water and lunch sandwiches. 4WD vehicles are preferable for accessing the nearby field sites, but if you do not have such a vehicle then carpooling with other participants from the morning venue to the field sites—approximately 10 minutes—will be possible.