Annual Festival Symoposium

Mountainfilm's Symposium is an all-day topical immersion that includes presentations, panel discussions and Q&As. Each year's Symposium addresses a different issue by assembling a wide-ranging lineup of scientists, artists and activists who are experts on the topic. The result is an interactive collage of education and inspiration.

Dave Foreman - What is our ethical responsibility to other species, and what is their value to us?

Dave Foreman, the founder of Earth First, has turned his attention to the calamities of the Sixth Extinction. His book, Rewilding North America, calls for restoring big wilderness based on the roles of large predators.

Greg Carr - What can we bring back? How hard is it to re-populate an ecosystem?

Greg Carr made his fortune marketing and selling voice mail. He’s since become a philanthropist who has committed $40 Million of his own money and 20 years of his life to reviving a moribund game preserve in Mozambique called Gorongosa, which was ravaged by civil war and drought.

Louie Psihoyos - What’s happening to our oceans?

Louie Psihoyos, who just won an Oscar for his documentary, The Cove, is making his next film on the extinction crisis in the Oceans and what that means for people living above ground.

Mike Fay - What’s happening to many species’ key habitats—the forests and jungles?

Mike Fay studied biodiversity up close when he walked through the jungle in Congo and Gabon for his remarkable Megatransect project in that took him through Congo and Gabon in 1997. A decade later, he traipsed the length of the entire Redwood Forest on the West Coast.

Nicole Rosmarino - What is disappearing in our own backyard?

Nicole Rosmarino is a scientist with Wild Earth Guardians, which works to protect and preserve biodiversity in the American West.

Panel Discussion - What is the future for biodiversity?

Panel Discussion - What’s working?

Rick Ridgeway - Why are migratory corridors so important to preserving biodiversity?

Rick Ridgeway is an acclaimed alpinist and an executive at Patagonia, who has founded and developed, Freedom to Roam, an organization dedicated to establishing and preserving essential migratory corridors for North American species.

Terry Root - What is the sixth extinction and how do we know it's happening?

Terry Root is a scientist at Stanford University who studies the viability of species and populations. She is also a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.

Tom Lovejoy - What’s a wild solution for climate change?

Tom Lovejoy coined the term, biological diversity and is a leading scientist on the subject of extinction. As the head of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, he looks at how climate change is affecting species loss.