32nd Annual Heartwood Forest Council
Natural Regeneration
May 24-27, 2024
Memorial Day Weekend
United Plant Savers Land Sactuary
35703 Loop Road, Rutland 45775
Meigs County, Ohio
Resources and Action Items
We've gathered together a bunch of resources from the Forest Council on this related webpage—check it out!
Since 1991, the annual Heartwood Forest Council has been a forum where activists gather to forge the future of the forest protection movement. Each year we meet over the Memorial Day Weekend in a different part of the Heartwood region, to bring regional focus on local issues. This year we are holding the 32nd annual Heartwood Forest Council in southeast Ohio at the United Plant Savers land sanctuary.
The United Plant Savers
is a center for the protection of native medicinal plants,
fungi, and their habitats while ensuring renewable populations for future
generations. United Plant Savers is a founding member of the Appalachian Forest
Farming Coalition, providing resources for private forest landowners, and members of
the Forest Carbon Coalition, a network of scientists, conservationists, and
environmental justice allies working together to protect US forests from harful
logging practices that are driving climate change, and to restore one of the
worlds's most vital carbon sinks to its natural capacity.
This year, our keynote speaker is Dr. Chad Hanson, co-founder and director of the John Muir Project of the
Earth Island Institute. The John Mur Project provides primary scientific research on
forest ecology and fire combined with a potent mix of agency monitoring and public
education backed up by advocacy and litigation in the courts. In recent years Chad
has turned his attention eastward to develop a better understanding of how fire
plays a role in forest ecology and forest management in the deciduous broadleaf
forest ecosystems found in the eastern US. You can read a review of his recent book,
Smokescreen, in the latest issue of Heartbeat.
Dr. Hanson's study of fire and forest ecology, combined with the expertise and knowledge cultivated by the staff at United Plant Savers, offers a chance for a deep dive into Appalachian forest ecology over the course of our weekend together. The fear of wildfire has become the new excuse for enabling the wholesale logging of our national forests, with the same broad-strokes policy applied equally to forests in both the eastern and western continental US, ignoring essential ecological distinctions between these regions. Attempts by the forest Service to justify the use of fire "because the Indians did it" ignores substantial differences between how indigenous peoples have used fire, and how agency misuse of fire is a means to promote logging on our public lands.
This theme of fire extends metaphorically to the nature of major issues that Ohio and the surrounding region faces. We gather where the coal fields of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky meet the gas lands of Pennsylvania and New York. The upper Ohio River Valley region is targeted for a massive buildout of the petrochemical plastics industry, turning fossil gas into throwaway plastic. The scale of these threats to our region's forests requires that we gather and strategize and work together to build the sustainable alternative that we envision.
At the same time, we have before us some tremendous opportunities to permanently protect public forests. Proposals from the Biden Administration to identify and set-aside Old-Growth and Mature forests from logging could mean historic new protections for habitat, recognizing the important role that these forests play in mitigating global climate change. A movement in southern Illinois to transform the Shawnee National Forest into the nation's first Climate Preserve has gained widespread support in the first two years of their campaign. Urban centers throughout the Heartwood region are recognizing the importance of urban forests as many city and county governments begin to write Climate Action Plans that offer a new way to protect canopy forests from development pressures and urban sprawl. The Heartwood Forest Council is our time together to connect and inspire a renewal of joyful resistance and natural regeneration of our spirits.
