2025 Forest Council

May 23-25, 2025 • Memorial Day weekend

Camp Crestfield • 195 Taggart Road • Slippery Rock, PA, 16057

The annual Heartwood Forest Council gathering has been at the fore of the forest defense movement since our founding in 1991. We are a steadfast voice for forest protection and restoration under the “Zero Cut” banner, a call to bring an end to commercial logging on public lands. At this critical juncture in our nation’s history we create space at this event to prepare activists with the knowledge and support we need to be effective defenders of our forests in this changing political climate.

This year we are gathering at Camp Crestfield, on the banks of Slippery Rock Creek in western Pennsylvania. The relative proximity to last year’s event in southeast Ohio lends itself to a deepening and strengthening of solidarity in the region. This gathering offers an opportunity to galvanize the grassroots opposition to the ARCH2 hydrogen hub plans, the cancerous growth of the fracking and plastics industries, and false solutions to climate change like carbon- injection facilities. These all present new threats to the region’s forests, our one true solution to solving the problem of anthropogenic climate change.

This year our keynote speaker is Dr. Joan Maloof, founder of the Old-Growth Forest Network and author of several books that have inspired many in the Heartwood community. Her vision of a network of protected old-growth forests is a vision rooted in bioharmonic sensibility and democratic accessibility. As stated on their website, “Building a network of protected old-growth forests means building a network of people who care about old-growth forests.” This effectively sums up the essence of why we gather each year, and we hope you will join us this May Memorial Day weekend for the 33rd annual Heartwood Forest Council.

We invite you to become a co-sponsor of this gathering, and we ask for a contribution from your organization to help pay for all the things we need to make the weekend a success. Levels of co-sponsorship range on a scale to fit your organization’s budget. We welcome contributions from one hundred dollars to one thousand.

Being a co-sponsor means more than a cash contribution to share in the costs of hosting this event. Co-sponsors help shape the program, identifying workshop topics that provide the forums our movement needs to coordinate effective action. Co-sponsors promote the event to their memberships, building the network and broadening the inclusiveness and accessibility of the event. Co-sponsors show the strength and depth of the Heartwood network.

Co-sponsoring organizations are invited to set up a table, where you can display your information and literature, and sell T-shirts and other merchandise you may have. This becomes the core of a “Green Marketplace” where we will set up the Silent Auction, and we can be creative with other ways to help make the information table area into a bustling weekend mini-market scene. This offers co-sponsors a way to do a bit of fundraising from the event you’ve helped create, as we help build the economic capacity of the movement.

It takes a cooperative effort to host this four-day event, and we recognize those contributions in a collage of logos that is included in all the promotional materials we produce. The event is featured in the center page of the spring issue of Heartbeat, where we print news from the grassroots forest movement from around the region. Contact our editing team at info@heartwood.org about including your story in the spring issue.

The funds we raise through these co-sponsorships help us keep registration fees low. They allow us to underwrite scholarships and fee waivers, to help ensure that all who want to attend can join the event without obstacle. Your contributions provide the necessary resources to make this year’s event a success. We are grateful for each and every donation!

The Heartwood Forest Council is the time where we meet and strategize for the year ahead. It is a way to reinforce our solidarity with genuine personal connections that sustain the activists doing the work in our movement. An outline of a typical schedule is attached, to give you a sense of the structure and flow of the event. This template can be customized to meet our needs.

Since 1991 this event has helped forge the future of the forest defense movement, and the alloy we create is now to be put to the test like never before. Diversity forged into unity is the source of strength and resilience for forest ecosystems just as they are for human social systems when we get it right. Let’s make good use of the power we have. Please join us in western Pennsylvania for the 33rd annual Heartwood Forest Council.