SYRCL in Wild Hope Magazine

SYRCL and the Wild & Scenic Film Festival were recently featured in Wild Hope Magazine, a publication committed to raising awareness about the need to “preserve our biodiversity heritage and motivate readers to get involved in protecting other species with whom we share this planet.”

Wild Hope was at the 2018 Wild & Scenic Film Festival and had some wonderful comments about their experience. We love their beautiful storytelling as a way to bring awareness to important issues. Some of their contributors are even Wild & Scenic filmmaker alumni! You can purchase their latest issue by heading over to their website, www.wildhope.org, or from the stand at BriarPatch Co-op. In doing so, you are supporting independent journalism and efforts to save wildlife around the world.

Wild Hope writer Tessa Buchin describes Wild & Scenic as “Not just a showcase for films that can make a difference, [but] the cornerstone of a community’s efforts to protect a river and reinvent itself”. The article highlights the founding of the South Yuba River Citizens League and how a grassroots movement became the “largest single-river watershed advocacy group in the United States” and ultimately a “lens that focused the love of the community for the river” as founding member Roger Hicks puts it.

Buchin thematically ties the piece together under the fitting title “The Lens that Connects Us.” The beautiful connection between this metaphorical lens and the more literal camera lens which makes the event possible is all about people – the notion that people can save a river, people can bring stories to life through film, people can gather in both celebration and solidarity.

Buchin discusses several films which she found inspiring, including local favorite and Audience Choice Award-Winner Redefining Prosperity: The Gold Rushes of Nevada City by John de Graaf. In particular, Buchin connects with Roger Hicks’s emotional interview in which he talks about his spiritual relationship to the Yuba River: “I see water as the blood of life…and rivers as the blood vessels that carry that life. The South Yuba is the heart of our community.”

She ends her write-up by tying together the film and relating it to her experience at the festival. She writes “Redefining Prosperity sends a globally relevant message of hope by showing us how a community suffering from the ruination of the past was saved by the shared love of a river. The threat to dam the South Yuba River coalesced the citizens of Nevada County like nothing else ever had, infusing the community with a spirit of reinvention that has led to a new “gold rush,” one that’s based on stewardship of the land rather than exploitation. ‘There’s nothing that we have done here that people can’t do in their own community. It’s just that people have a sense of place here,’ Hicks says.”

A special thank you to Wild Hope Magazine for featuring SYRCL and Wild & Scenic in their inspiring publication; we are thrilled about the piece. It is humbling to have our mission reflected back to us and hear that the work we are doing is effective.

If you’d like to check out the magazine in its entirety, including the stunning 6-page spread with gorgeous photography and riveting prose about SYRCL and Wild & Scenic, you can purchase their latest issue by heading over to their website, www.wildhope.org.

In addition to this article, you will find captivating stories covering South Africa’s first all-female anti-poaching unit, why farmers are turning to native bees to pollinate crops, field notes from a biologist monitoring critically endangered saiga antelope in Western Mongolia, and much more!