Special Guests

THANK YOU TO OUR 2010 WILD & SCENIC SPECIAL GUESTS!

Colin Beavan

As the news stories go: “Colin Beavan is a liberal schlub who got tired of listening to himself complain about the world without ever actually doing anything about it…” So, in 2006, Colin launched a year-long project in which he, his wife, daughter and dog went off the grid and attempted to live in the middle of NYC with as little environmental impact as possible. The project provided a vehicle to attract public attention to a range of environmental crises. His experiment in lifestyle redesign is the subject of the film No Impact Man and a book by the same name. Colin was named one of MSN’s Ten Most Influential Men of 2007. He has appeared on The Colbert Report, Good Morning America, Nightline, The Montel Show, and all the major NPR shows. Colin speaks with No Impact Man on Friday eve at the Nevada Theatre, and at a workshop Saturday morning, 9am in Activist Center 1. http://noimpactproject.org/

Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart is an internationally respected actor known for successfully bridging the gap between the theatrical world of the Shakespearean stage and contemporary film and television. Patrick has starred in the hit X-Men films, and is widely known for his origination of the role of Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and earned an Emmy for one of the many TV episodes he directed. His list of stage credits includes playing opposite Ian McKellen in the critically acclaimed production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at The Theatre Royal Haymarket before taking it on a sold out tour around the UK last year. Wild & Scenic is honored to have this distinguished actor and individual. He narrates filmmaker Seth Warren’s world premiere adventure-eco film, Nature Propelled, and will speak with the film on Saturday evening in the Nevada Theatre. Interested in seeing Patrick Stewart on Saturday evening? PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR SEATING INFO.

Tim DeChristopher
Tim DeChristopher was a featured guest at Wild & Scenic last year, after monkey wrenching an oil & gas drilling lease auction in Utah. Tim won the bidding on several parcels, and drove up the price on many more. Since last Fest, Tim has been in and out of court, facing 10 years in prison, but he’s also been enlarging his circle of support. At Wild & Scenic, Tim met filmmakers Beth & George Gage (American Outrage), who are currently working on a film about his story. Tim, Beth, and George will present a sneak peek of the film on Friday evening at NC Elementary. www.bidder70.org

Deborah Lindsay
Deborah Lindsay serves on the Pacific Grove City Council. Her election platform was “Economy, Environment and Equity,” using the permaculture principles of “People, Planet and Profit.” Her campaign was the first “carbon neutral campaign” ever run by any candidate for any elected position in the US. She also co-hosts the weekly radio program, Tomorrow Matters - on KRXA 540 AM based out of Monterey, CA, which focuses on solutions to the problems of today for a better world tomorrow. She is an Environmental Community Organizer, encouraging citizens to build local and regional networks to mitigate the crisis of climate change. Deborah speaks at a workshop on Saturday, 1:45pm in Activist Center 2. www.deborahlindsay.com

Ari Derfel
Ari Derfel is an entrepreneur, organic chef, activist, mountain guide & public speaker. He co-founded Back to Earth Organic Catering in 2001, the first organic catering company in the US. They also operate Back to Earth Outdoors, which provides wilderness leadership opportunities for urban youth, and yoga retreats for adults. Currently Ari is building Gather, an all organic restaurant in Berkeley at the David Brower Center. Back to Earth and Gather have positioned themselves at the forefront of “greening” the hospitality industry. In 2007 Ari saved every single piece of trash & recycling he created so that he could see his impact on the planet firsthand. He gave the year of trash to artist Kuros Zahedi, and last fall it was unveiled as a single work of art in Seattle, WA. Ari will be speaking at his own workshop on Saturday, 4:15pm at Activist Center 2. www.gatherrestaurant.com

Majka Burhardt
Majka Burhardt is a writer, climber, and guide whose work has focused on the examination of how to make adventure go beyond exploration and toward cultural and environmental connection. She is the author of Vertical Ethiopia: Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn of Africa (Shama, 2008), and Coffee: Authentic Ethiopia (Spring 2010). Majka has written for magazines from Men’s Journal to Climbing, and she also appears as a lecturer throughout North America in conjunction with her international projects. Majka will speak with her film, Way Point Namibia on Friday evening at the Great Hall and at her workshop on Saturday, 1:45pm in Activist Center 1, City Hall. www.majkaburhardt.com

Hai Vo
Hai Vo, a Brower Youth Award winner, co-founded the Real Food Challenge (RFC) at UC Irvine after he radically transformed his health by learning to eat nutritious food. RFC is a national organization with representatives from more than 300 colleges in the United States dedicated to reallocating the four billion dollars spent annually on food at universities to “real” food: food that is ecologically-sound, community-based, humane, and fair. Hai co-organized events that brought students together to “simply eat,” and to discuss their understanding of food. The RFC at UCI has engaged over 500 campus and community members in leadership development, networking convergences, dinners, roundtable events, educational series, and online networks, all centered around sustainable food systems. The RFC has also worked with the University of California to develop a system-wide, institutional commitment to 20% real food procurement by the year 2020. Hai will be speaking with the Brower Youth Award film, Forces of Nature, Saturday evening at the Vets Hall (please note this venue change from printed program). http://realfoodchallenge.org

Terry Ratliff
Terry Ratliff’s family has lived in the mountains of eastern Kentucky for five generations. Deep in the Appalachian mountains, where coal is king, Terry has found himself at the center of a contentious community battle over a proposed mountaintop removal coal mine. This traditional Appalachian folk artist and furniture-maker whose work is nationally renowned, is now an environmental activist fighting to save his home and the beautiful mountains he loves. Terry will be speaking at the screening of Deep Down on Saturday evening in the Oddfellows Hall. www.deepdownfilm.org

Carrie Dann was a favorite guest of 2009 and we're honored to have her return. Carrie is considered a living legend in the struggles of Native Americans. As a Western Shoshone grandmother and activist, she has been at the forefront of the Western Shoshone Nation’s struggle for cultural, spiritual and land rights. With her sister, who passed in 2005, she has squared off against international gold mining corporations, the nuclear industry and the U.S. government. Their disputes reached the U.S. Supreme Court and eventually to the United Nations. Carrie’s story is featured in the return of the film American Outrage (won Honorable Mention at last year's fest), being shown on Saturday morning in the Native American session at 106 Union. She'll be there to speak about her struggles - AND RECENT VICTORY! YEAH CARRIE!

Rita de Quercus
Rita de Quercus has been a leader and activist in the local food movement in Nevada County since 2005. She has played key roles in many aspects of the local food movement, including co-coordinating the Local Food Coalition network, three Come Home To Eat events, the annual Farm Guide, the formation of Nevada County Grown, the farm-to-school efforts of Live Healthy Nevada County, and the Nevada City Energy Solutions Taskforce. Her food activist roots go back to her childhood in southern Ohio, where she grew up in a large extended rural family and community. Rita will be speaking after the screening of the film, What’s Organic About Organic? on Sunday morning in the Stone Hall.

Amigo Bob Cantisano
Amigo Bob Cantisano is one of the godfathers of organic farming and has one of the longest and most impressive resumes in the field. His career spans all aspects of the organic and local food movement, from organizing food co-ops, retail stores, wholesale distribution, diversified organic farming, farm and garden supply, homesteader, heirloom plant propagator, farm advisor, farmer organizer, educator, technical writer, inventor and political activist. Out of his wise business sense he created Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, Organic Ag Advisors, We the People Natural Foods Cooperative (parent of Mountain People’s Warehouse and in turn UNFI) and Aeolia Olive Oil. He is also a founding member of a dozen ag-realted organizations and 30 years ago created the Ecological Farming Conference, the premiere organic farming event in the world. Amigo was also the co-author of the California Organic Foods Act of 1979, the nation’s first organic farming law. Amigo will be speaking in a special workshop at the A.P.P.L.E. Center, Saturday, 2pm.

Jon Bowermaster
Jon Bowermaster is author of ten books, producer of a dozen documentary films, and a six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council. His Antarctic expedition was the final in his OCEANS 8 project, which has taken him and his teams around the world by sea kayak, including expeditions to the Aleutian Islands, Vietnam, French Polynesia, Chile/Argentina/Bolivia, Gabon, Croatia and Tasmania. Seeing the world from the seat of a sea kayak over the past decade has given Bowermaster a one-of-a-kind look at both the health of the world’s oceans and the lives of the nearly 3 billion people around the globe who depend on them. Jon will speak with his two films, Terra Antarctica (Friday eve, Great Hall) and What Would Darwin Think? (Sat morn, Vets Hall), and at his workshop Saturday, 4:15pm at City Hall). www.jonbowermaster.com

Kerry Coughlin is Regional Director for the Americas at the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), an international organization that operates a market-driven program to promote sustainability and environmental responsibility in the global seafood industry. Kerry has overall responsibility for managing the growth and success of the MSC’s sustainable fisheries certification, commercial partnership and marketing programs in North and Latin America, as well as oversight of MSC operations in the region. She also serves as a member of MSC’s global Senior Management Team, and participates in the organization’s management and strategic development worldwide. Kerry will speak after the film, The End of the Line, on Saturday evening at NC Elem.

Alan Haight farms at Riverhill Farm in Nevada City, California with his wife, Jo McProud. Established in 2001, Riverhill Farm provides fresh, local organically grown fruits and vegetables to the Nevada City community through a Community Supported Agriculture subscription offering, the Nevada City Farmers' Market, and local restaurants. Each summer, Riverhill Farm endeavors to train new, young farmers for the growing sustainable agriculture movement by providing internship opportunities to individuals wishing to learn the practical skills of farming. To learn more about Riverhill Farm, go to www.riverhillfarm.com. Alan will speak after the film, What's Organic About Organic? Sunday morning in the Stone Hall.

Marty Marty Mesh helped form Florida Certified Organic Growers & Consumers, Inc. (FOG) in 1989 and has served as Executive Director since 1995. In 2004, Marty was named among the 25 people who influenced the organic industry, due in part to the past 35 years he has dedicated to a more environmentally responsible and socially just form of agriculture. He has been involved for more than 10 years in the Agricultural Justice Project, a nonprofit initiative to increase equity and fairness in food system. Marty is also active in public policy evaluation and its effect on sustainable agriculture, food access, and the National Organic Program (NOP). FOG is also working on projects to encourage adoption of organic production practices among Florida growers; to better understand and increase food security in Alachua County, FL, through gardening projects and a community food planning project; and to research the most pressing production and marketing issues faced by organic and transitional specialty crop producers.
Marty will speak after the film he appears in, What's Organic About Organic? Sunday morning the Stone Hall of the Miners Foundry.

The Dervaes Family is BACK! A favorite of the 2009 fest, the family has since become national celebs for their urban homestead (even appearing on Oprah). They founded Path to Freedom, a family-operated urban homestead project established in 2001 to promote a simpler and more fulfilling lifestyle. Since the mid-1980s, Mr. Dervaes and his three adult children, Anaïs, Justin, and Jordanne, have steadily worked to transform their ordinary city lot in Pasadena, California, into a thriving organic garden that supplies them and their “citified” backyard farm animals with food year round. These eco-pioneers also run a successful business selling fresh produce to local restaurants. The income helps fund their purchases of solar panels, energy-efficient appliances, and a biodiesel processor to further decrease the homestead’s reliance on Earth’s non-renewable resources. Hear them speak on Saturday eve in the Nevada Theatre with the film about their story, Homegrown. www.pathtofreedom.com

Caleen Sisk-Franco & Mark Franco
Caleen Sisk-Franco is the Spiritual Leader and Tribal Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and Mark Franco is the Headman for the tribe. Caleen and Mark are deeply involved in maintaining the Winnemem Wintu culture and ceremonies and acts as the government liaison for the Winnemem's tribal recognition efforts. They will be speaking after In the Light of Reverence and at the workshop Saturday afternoon at the Native American session at 106 Union Street.

Gretchen Taylor
Gretchen Taylor has over 25 years working in the lawn and garden industry, and has traveled throughout the United States, Canada and England to visit garden centers to study trends and business practices. In 2004, the Washington State Nursery and Landscape Association awarded her the honorable distinction of “Tradesman of the Year.” Her career focus has been organic garden products. She has progressed from a sales rep for Safer organics to her current post of Vice President of Sales for the Dr. Earth Company. Gretchen speaks at a workshop about soil Saturday, 12:30pm in Activist Center 2.

Daniel Nicholson
Daniel is a primarily self trained naturalist and horticulturalist who has chosen to live close to nature in the Sierra foothills throughout his adult life. He spends his time developing sustainable organic farms, teaching natural history, and maintaining the restoration and education activities with the Yuba Watershed Institute where he has been on the board of directors since 2002. He has contributed significantly to the two most current Sierra Nevada natural history guides (Laws Field Guide, and the Storer, Usinger, Lucas Sierra Nevada Guide to Natural History) as a mycological advisor. He spearheaded and continues to orchestrate the YWI’s fungus foray event now on its twelfth year. He conducts his own research in native plant restoration, year round organic vegetable production, and Sierra Nevada fungi identification in his home on the San Juan Ridge in Nevada County. Hear about fungus fun when he speaks with Know Your Mushrooms on Saturday eve, Stone Hall.

Roland Knapp
Roland Knapp earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1992. Since then he has been based at the University of California Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory (located near Mammoth Lakes) where his research has focused on human-caused impacts to aquatic ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada. Research topics have included the effects of livestock grazing on golden trout in their native streams, changes to Sierra Nevada lake ecosystems caused by nonnative trout, and the roles of introduced trout, UV radiation, pesticides in driving amphibian declines. His most recent research focuses on the role of an emerging disease on the increasingly endangered mountain yellow-legged frog.He speaks with the film, Frogs: The Thin Green Line on Saturday morning at the Vets Hall.

May Boeve
May Boeve is the Director for Partnerships and Co-founder of 350.org, an international climate change campaign. Previously, May co-founded and helped lead the Step It Up 2007 campaign (www.stepitup2007.org), which helped change the debate about global warming policy in the U.S. and combined the efforts of over 200 partner organizations. She graduated from Middlebury College in 2007 with a B.A. in Political Science. In the Fall of 2004 she traveled the country as part of Project BioBus (www.projectbiobus.com), an educational tour of the U.S. that visited 65 schools and gave presentations about climate change. As a follow-up, she helped lead the Road to Detroit Project, a fuel-efficiency road trip that concluded with a 3-day series of events in Detroit, focused on green jobs and social justice. May was awarded the Brower Youth Award in 2006, and was recently featured in Women's Health and Body and Soul magazines. May speaks at a workshop about 350.org on Saturday, 3pm at Activist Center 1.

Brock Dolman
Brock Doleman is a co-founder and co-owner of Occidental Arts and Ecology Center and the Sowing Circle Intentional Community. He is the Director of OAEC's WATER Institute and Permaculture Program. He is a wildlife biologist and permaculture, erosion control and watershed restoration consultant. Since 1995 under Brock’s direction, the OAEC Permaculture Program has become nationally recognized as a leading permaculture education and innovative demonstration center. Brock has presented at numerous conferences such as Bioneers, EcoFarm, GreenPrints, HOPES and SolFest. He also has lectured internationally in Costa Rica, Brazil and China. He has been on many national radio programs, published nationally distributed articles on permaculture and watersheds, and widely lectures at local universities, colleges, environmental forums, civic clubs, and public political meetings. He has been featured in the award winning films: The 11th Hour by Leonardo DiCaprio; The Call of Life by Species Alliance; and Permaculture: A Quiet Revolution by Vanessa Shultz; and the soon to be released films - We Are What We Eat by Aaron Lucich and Divine Water Film by Healing Waters Institute. Brock will speak at a Food & Water workshop, 9am Saturday at Activist Center 2, and again on Sunday morning with Call of Life at the Nevada Theatre.

Shannon Biggs
Shannon Biggs directs the Community and Green Rights organizing at Global Exchange, assisting communities to confront the corporate (and State) harms they face in a new way: by asserting local governing rights to enact binding laws that place the rights of communities—and nature—above the claimed “rights” of corporations. She is a national lecturer of Democracy Schools, which teaches this paradigm-shifting model of grassroots rights-based activism. Over 125 U.S. communities have used this model to take courageous action to change the rules for corporations and to take charge of their local destinies. She is also the author of the book Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots (Polipoint Press, Fall 2007). Previously, she was the Director of Operations at the International Forum on Globalization, and a lecturer of International Relations at San Francisco State University.She’ll speak in a workshop on Saturday about community rights Saturday, 11:15am in Activist Center 1.

Adam Browning
Adam is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Vote Solar Initiative, a non-profit organization with the mission of bringing solar energy into the mainstream. Vote Solar got its start with a successful ballot initiative for a $100 million solar revenue bond in San Francisco in 2001, and since then has been working with state and municipal governments on pro-solar policies with the goal of jumpstarting the national transition to renewable energy. Prior to Vote Solar, Adam spent eight years with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s San Francisco office, where he won the Agency’s top pollution prevention award for developing a program that reduced air emissions of mercury from gold mines in Nevada by over five tons annually. He’ll speak Friday evening in the Nevada Theatre with the film, Unlimited.

Tim Castleman
Tim Castleman, a former HVAC contractor, founded the Drive 55 Conservation Project shortly after the tragic events of 9/11/2001 in response to his growing awareness of our dependence on imported oil and the consequences of climate change caused by burning it. Researching biofuels as a possible solution Tim concluded that switching our consumption from one energy carrier to another was not the answer and that conservation is key to a sustainable future. He’ll be speaking Saturday evening at the Vets Hall with iDrive 55.

Laurette Rogers
Laurette is the Watershed Education Director at The Bay Institute. In 1992, she was teaching fourth grade at Brookside School in San Anselmo, CA, when her students began the Shrimp Project, a project designed to help save an endangered species through restoration and public outreach. The Shrimp Project has now evolved into the STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring A Watershed) Project, a project of The Bay Institute. Laurette is the author of The California Freshwater Shrimp Project: An Example of Environmental Project-Based Learning. She’ll speak with the screening of A Simple Question: The Story of STRAW on Saturday afternoon in the Vets Hall.