2025 End of Year Round-Up
Rounding off another successful year, the BCC Team are delighted to have brought the reinvigorated fundraising and Campout of 2025 to fruition. Our ever-growing Big Canopy Campout community has shown fantastic support after last year’s hiatus, and this has given momentum to our year, giving us high hopes for 2026.
This year, our new fundraising cause, Friends of Glenan Wood, was a distinct change from the SËRA Foundation, who we greatly enjoyed working alongside over the past three years. This change provided a platform to raise awareness of a whole new side to environmental protection, and we were thrilled to bring to light the challenges facing native woodland and natural places closer to home. We are continuing to give our support to the SËRA Foundation, keeping updated on the progress of the Siekoya Remolino community as they develop their tree climbing skills, and watching with interest as the construction of their laboratory takes shape. We are pleased to continue telling their story whilst bringing to light a very different story of community action unfolding in Glenan Wood, protecting a precious fragment of temperate rainforest environment on the West Coast of Scotland.
Robin Sitting upon the historic ruins of the abandoned upper village, found within the woodlands of Glenan.
Robin Webster - Secretary, Friends of Glenan Wood
We have continued our partnership with DMM, and this year we have added new bespoke climbing gear to our online shop, along with the return of some favourites from previous years. New in this year was the XSRE Locksafe in toucan blue, as well as Locking Vaults in classic BCC green and gold. The return of Ultra-O’s and Impact Blocks in classic colours were very well received. In addition to the changes made to how our shop operated, we also sold much of our DMM stock through external retailers, which gave a considerable boost to our sales, and ultimately the profits donated this year. In addition to the climbing gear, we have introduced new colours and designs for the various BCC garments on sale to promote Friends of Glenan Wood and the SËRA Foundation, this year introduced a new and unique lichen design seen on the Glenan Wood garments, as well as the cool stickers we sold with great success, check them out in our shop!
As has become a tradition for Big Canopy Campout, we had the pleasure of attending the Deutsche Baumpflegetage in Augsburg. This year we had our very own stand which provided an excellent platform for promoting the SËRA Foundation, Glenan Wood, and the importance of protecting native woodlands worldwide. On the stand this year were BCC directors Vicki, Rebecca and Jez, with help from a welcome new addition to the core BCC team, Amy Knowles. Steve Pearce from Tree Projects, and Sam Hardingham of Everyday Arbor also made appearances, bringing an abundance of energy and enthusiasm. Altogether, the team successfully made the stand the loudest in the conference Messe, bringing in smiles and laughter from our first day there until the last. We had a great time speaking with countless tree climbers and nature enthusiasts from all around the world; some familiar supporters of BCC, and some new faces curious about what BCC is all about. Augsburg is always an excellent opportunity for us to enjoy some in-person time with people and companies who continue to support us in our fundraising efforts.
We also find it to be a great chance to promote the small businesses and creative individuals who we work alongside each year. DMM, Canopy Robyn, and Keñau, to name just a few, make regular appearances at the conference, and our stand in the Messe is a great place to show off their products. We are always grateful for companies to support and promote us too. For the second year now DMM have very generously raffled off various products as a means of fundraising for BCC. This has always created a real buzz in the conference, with many attendees buying tickets and turning up in anticipation of a potential win, with this year’s prizes including the much anticipated Kinisi Harness by DMM. Through the popularity of the event, and the generosity of DMM, this year’s raffle tickets raised an impressive €2000, getting this year’s fundraising off to a flying start.
By way of improving how BCC is run, we are delighted to welcome a dedicated Event Manager, Katie Poulter (The voice of reason between the Tough sisters).
Katie joined us in September and has been a welcome asset to our team, diving straight in with enthusiasm and motivation for what BCC is all about, and what we hope to achieve in the year ahead.
“I want to support BCC because I think the work is amazing and I want everyone to know about it! I think the event is unique and I can't wait to help encourage and support groups and individuals to get camping!
I've worked with a variety of events over many years, but nothing quite like this, and certainly nothing worldwide and I'm excited to get involved in such a passionate and dedicated network of people.”
While we continue to follow the progress of the Siekoya Remolino community through the work of the SËRA Foundation, we have had a great experience working for the first time with Friends of Glenan Wood, and we have been delighted with the success of this first year.
Glenan Wood is one of the last remaining fragments of Atlantic Temperate Rainforest in Argyll, Scotland. It’s been illuminating to learn more about this incredible ecosystem, and it’s amazing to think that it’s right on our doorstep. This has inspired us to promote “looking local” for ecosystems big and small which might be overlooked and in need of protection. Glenan Wood is a fine example of this, and along with raising awareness of the hardworking community who are making efforts to safeguard it, we have also been raising funds for them too. Thanks to generous donations, fundraising initiatives, and all-round support from the BCC community, we are pleased to announce that we have succeeded in meeting our £5K target, which will be sent to Friends of Glenan Wood to culminate 2025’s fundraising. This money can help them with a number of things, from improving future learning and community engagement events by providing equipment for a cooking tent, to bolstering ongoing work, such as materials for bridges and boardwalks, or financing Rhododendron removal work and deer management initiatives.
As part of our fundraising, and through various discussions with Rhythian from Friends of Glenan Wood, we decided to dedicate a set portion of this year’s funding to cover the costs of a custom-made deer oven that could be built and prepped in time for the 2025 Big Canopy Campout event. This made for a very special campout for us, as we had the pleasure of joining the community for their hosted event, where we could celebrate the woods through talk, camping and music. Over the course of the weekend, Rhyddian prepared and fired up the deer oven, explaining the process and ethos of including it in the campout, before serving up a feast of locally culled venison to culminate the event. The significance of this, as Rhyddian explains, is to create a more community orientated approach to conservation here. The deer in the area need to be culled to prevent unhindered destruction of the flora in the woods, and so to turn this necessity into providing food and a celebratory gathering of this unique place, the work required to protect the forest can become more than just work, but rather a sort of culture of the place for everyone to partake in together.
-BelgianBeerMonkeys Campout 2025
The international campout as a whole this year was a success as always, and a particularly exciting one at that with the introduction of hosted events. The option to have private campouts as individuals, groups or families, was still very popular, however the opportunity for hosted events created a whole new kind of campout experience. Our campout with Friends of Glenan Wood was one such hosted event, and we were delighted to see the hugely successful BelgianBeerMonkeys campout in Belgium, who raised an impressive sum of £1,534.55 in donations. This was through the sales of the gorgeous jewellery designed and crafted by Laura and the contributions from the participants involved in the event.
Our old friends from the Bob Brown Foundation, in Tasmania, hosting a big event with an impressive 70 registered campers in support of their ongoing resistance against the destruction of old-growth forest there.
This year’s event comprised of 426 campers across 37 countries, with new countries, such as Hawaii joining in on the event, spreading the joy and love for the natural world even further.
To coincide with the campout event, we released our BCC Documentary on our website; free to watch, but with the option to donate. Climbing Through Cultures with Siekoya Remolino was met with great success at climbing conferences and film festivals throughout 2024, and as the final festival showings came to an end early in 2025, we felt that it was the perfect time to make it available for public viewing.
We are continuing to support the SËRA Foundation, and much has progressed in the community since the filming of our documentary. We hope to continue raising awareness of their incredible story of resistance over the years ahead, and as a continuation of this endeavour we have now released the documentary to view on our YouTube channel. In doing so we hope that it will reach audiences who may not be familiar with the fantastic work that the SËRA Foundation are doing, while making it all the more accessible to those who have already supported our fundraising efforts for the Siekoya, and want to learn more about our 2023 expedition and how it was made possible by all of our international supporters.
We’re always happy to hear updates from all of our past and present causes, and we aim to begin next year with a newsletter and blog post about what’s new with Friends of Glenan Wood, the SËRA Foundation and the Bob Brown Foundation.
While we will continue to fundraise for Glenan Wood, we want to make 2026 a storytelling year, putting emphasis on raising awareness alongside our usual fundraising initiatives. All of these causes have fascinating stories behind the incredible work they do, and stories which continue to unfold as they work to preserve the native woodland in three very different parts of the world. Work is already underway getting ready for 2026, and we’re looking forward to bringing you some exciting updates in the New Year.