2010 Mountainfilm Festival Symposium Theme is The Extinction Crisis

Each year the Mountainfilm Festival, held in Telluride, Colorado, is amongst the top events for the outdoor adventure community. The four-day long event, which runs from May 28th-31st this year, is a showcase of art, film, culture, and while promoting environmental responsibility.

Now in its 32nd year, the Mountainfilm Festival has grown in size and scope and continues to offer a variety of activities for attendees. One of the centerpieces for the event is the day-long Moving Mountains Symposium that kicks off the festival. Each year the symposium selects a topic, and then invites a number speakers and dignitaries from the outdoor adventure community to weigh in on the subject. The result is a series of presentations, Q&A sessions, and panel discussions that are both fascinating and informative to attend.

This year, the subject of the symposium is The Extinction Crisis. This rather broad, but enormously important, topic is something that all of us should be aware of. On the symposium website it says that scientists estimate that by the end of this century, more than half of the species on this planet will extinct. That's a pretty sobering assessment of the situation. Why this is happening and what can be done about is will be the subject of many discussions.

Some of the speakers that are lined up for the symposium include Greg Carr, who is working to rebuild a national park in Mozambique, Paul Nicklen, a photographer and journalist, and Cristina Mittermeier, who works with the League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) who try to put a visual face on the beauty of our world and the dramatic ways it is changing.

Each week leading up to the festival the Mountainfilm Blog will be spotlighting one of these speakers. The first is up now and it is with mountaineer and environmental activist Rick Ridgeway who talks about what drove him to seek out adventure in his life, his thoughts on the extinction crisis, and what we can do to start to change the situation for the better. It's a good interview, and definitely sets the tone for this very important topic.