FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Documentary Film Connects Leopold to Modern Conservation Efforts
Green Fire film to premiere in Wisconsin the first week of March
CONTACT: Jennifer Kobylecky, Aldo Leopold Foundation 608-355-0279, ext. 27, or jennifer@aldoleopold.org
BARABOO, WIS.—During the first week of March, the Aldo Leopold Foundation will release Green Fire, the first feature length (72 min.), high definition documentary film ever made about famed conservationist Aldo Leopold. Emmy-Award winning narrator Peter Coyote lends his talent as the voice of Aldo Leopold, and the film’s on-screen guide is Curt Meine, Leopold’s biographer. The film explores Aldo Leopold’s life in the early part of the twentieth century and the many ways his land ethic idea continues to be applied all over the world today. In partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, premiere screenings in select cities will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Weeks Act, the law that led to the creation of many of our eastern National Forests, and sparked the long-term effort to replant and restore forests that still continues today.
The film will premiere across the state of Wisconsin the first week of March, screening in Baraboo, Milwaukee, Appleton, and Madison. The premiere screenings will lead up to multiple showings at Aldo Leopold Weekend community events statewide on Saturday and Sunday, March 5 and 6. About a dozen other major premiere events will be held in the first half of 2011, including premieres in San Francisco, Denver, New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.. Beginning on March 5, the Aldo Leopold Foundation will begin nationwide distribution of the film by releasing it for public screenings arranged by community organizers. The film will air on public television in 2012.
Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time is a production of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Center for Humans and Nature. The film shares highlights from Leopold’s life and extraordinary career, explaining how he shaped conservation in the twentieth century and still inspires people today. Although probably best known as the author of the conservation classic A Sand County Almanac, Leopold is also renowned for his work as an educator, philosopher, forester, ecologist, and wilderness advocate.
The world premiere of Green Fire played to a 1,000 person sell-out crowd on February 5 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The worldwide premiere event commemorated Leopold’s early connection to the southwest in his career with the U.S. Forest Service. His work ultimately brought him to Madison, Wisconsin, where he continued his investigations into ecology and the philosophy of conservation, and in 1933 published the first textbook in the field of wildlife management. Later that year he accepted a new chair in game management – a first for the University of Wisconsin and the nation.
“Aldo Leopold’s legacy lives on today in the work of people and organizations across the nation and around the world,” said Aldo Leopold Foundation Executive Director Buddy Huffaker. “What is exciting about Green Fire is that it is more than just a documentary about Aldo Leopold; it also explores the influence his ideas have had in shaping the conservation movement as we know it today by highlighting some really inspiring people and organizations doing great work to connect people and the natural world in ways that even Leopold might not have imagined.”
The Aldo Leopold Foundation carries on the work begun by Leopold and his family in the ‘30s and ‘40s with education and land stewardship programs at the Aldo Leopold Shack and Farm near Baraboo, recognized as a National Historic Landmark for its crucial role in informing Leopold’s writing and serving as the site of some of the nation’s earliest attempts at land restoration. Beginning in 1935 the Shack property was the setting for a grand experiment. Leopold and his family planted thousands of pine trees, began to restore prairies, and documented the ensuing changes in the flora and fauna, all of which further informed and inspired Leopold.
Dr. Stan Temple, recently retired from the academic position at the University of Wisconsin once held by Aldo Leopold says, “It took decades for the science of ecological restoration to catch on and become a real endeavor that is now practiced in ecosystems literally around the world.”
The Green Fire film illustrates Leopold’s continuing influence by exploring a multitude of current projects like those carried out by the Aldo Leopold Foundation that connect people and land at the local level. Viewers will meet urban children in Chicago learning about local foods and ecological restoration. They’ll learn about ranchers in Arizona and New Mexico who maintain healthy landscapes by working on their own properties and with their neighbors, in cooperative community conservation efforts. They’ll meet wildlife biologists who are bringing back threatened and endangered species, from cranes to Mexican wolves, to the landscapes where they once thrived. The Green Fire film portrays how Leopold’s vision of a community that cares about both people and land—his call for a land ethic—ties all of these modern conservation stories together and offers inspiration and insight for the future.
“The making of Green Fire has been a process of discovery,” says Curt Meine, the film’s on-screen guide. Meine’s doctoral dissertation was a biography of Aldo Leopold, published as Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (University of Wisconsin Press, 1988). To give the film its modern perspective of Leopold’s influence in the conservation movement today, Meine was charged with conducting hundreds of interviews with people practicing conservation all over the country. “Meeting all those people has really yielded new connections between Leopold and nearly every facet of the environmental movement, including ocean conservation, urban gardening, and climate change—issues that Leopold never directly considered in his lifetime but has nonetheless affected as his ideas are carried on by others,” said Meine.
“Aldo Leopold is one of our nation’s most beloved nature writers,” says environmental historian Susan Flader. “His A Sand County Almanac, published posthumously in 1949, has become a catalyst for our evolving ecological awareness and a classic in American literature.” Leopold is regarded by many as one of the most influential conservation thinkers of the twentieth century, and the film highlights the ways his legacy continues to encourage us to see the natural world “as a community to which we belong.”
The Aldo Leopold Foundation is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization based in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The foundation’s mission is to inspire an ethical relationship between people and land through the legacy of Aldo Leopold. Leopold regarded a land ethic as a product of social evolution. “Nothing so important as an ethic is ever ‘written,’” he explained. It evolves “in the minds of a thinking community.” Learn more about the Aldo Leopold Foundation and the Green Fire movie at www.aldoleopold.org.
If you go:
Tickets are $8 in advance and $10 at the door. Visit www.greenfiremovie.com to buy tickets.
March 1 (7pm): Baraboo, WI at the Al. Ringling Theatre
March 2 (7pm): Milwaukee, WI at the Milwaukee Public Museum’s IMAX theater
March 3 (7pm): Appleton, WI at UW-Fox Valley James W. Perry Hall
March 4 (7pm): Madison, WI at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery
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EDITORIAL NOTES
• The following people are available for interviews about Green Fire. Contact Jen Kobylecky to set up an interview appointment.
1. Buddy Huffaker, Aldo Leopold Foundation Executive Director and the film's executive producer
2. Curt Meine, Leopold scholar, conservation biologist, and the film’s narrator
3. Susan Flader, Leopold scholar, environmental historian, featured in the film
4. Steve & Ann Dunsky, US Forest Service filmmakers, directed and edited Green Fire. Also worked on the acclaimed film about the US Forest Service, The Greatest Good.
• Preview copies of the film for media review will be available sometime in early February. Contact Jen Kobylecky if you would like to screen a preview copy of the film.