PennFuture’s Director of Outreach Heather Sage talks with Pittsburgh artist, educator, and environmental activist Connie Merriman about her work raising awareness in an effort to protect a unique greenspace in Pittsburgh from destruction. Hays Woods, as Connie and her husband Tom, both with Carnegie Mellon Univerity’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, have dubbed the 635-acre undeveloped forest in Pittsburgh’s Hays neighborhood located just south of the Monogahela River, is threatened by a proposed mixed-use development that would include a thoroughbred race track, retail, and luxury housing.

The developer proposes to deforest the majority of the site, a mature contiguous interior forest that lies within steep stream valleys, and then strip mine using a technique that is akin to mountaintop removal mining. In this way, the hilltops will be leveled and the valleys permanently buried, along with the six streams that flow through them. PennFuture and other citizens’ groups have been active in working to protect the land from this destruction.

In this podcast, Connie and Heather drive to Hays Woods in search of the elusive "Snowball," an albino red-tailed hawk that has been observed living in the woods for the past four years. Connie hopes to capture Snowball’s image on film to educate people about the many rare assets this forest in the city, that has been hidden in plain sight for decades, has to offer. To learn more about Hays Woods, visit www.savehayswoods.org.