pahick, I have seen it for years. The woods of PA are dieing off. I remember hearing from GC flunkies that the deer were killing off the laurel. I had seen for a long time that some areas that used to be heavy with laurel were starting to thin out. If you really looked, there are orange spots on the leaves of the mature laurel that was thinning out. It is now a GC fact that our PA laurel has a blight. Beech trees have a blight, oaks have gypsy moths, hemlocks have a parasite(I have seen it on other trees too), the ash trees have some kind of boring worm, and I guess plenty of competition from invasive plants. Most of the SGLs around here are high up and nobody wanted the land because you could not grow anything on it anyway. Why the hell would a forest regenerate plants that never grew there to begin with? I have seen what comes back 20+ years after a clearcut at higher elevations and it usually is not good. ***What the heck is a "pole smoker"? I am guessing it is not good.
