Last night, the Aspen Environment Forum presented this film in the second of its three Evening Exchanges.The evening started with a panel moderated by Elizabeth Vargas and made up of a representative of the Wilderness Conservation Society, a former director of the National Park Service , a representative of Goldman Sachs and a National Geographic photographer.
The panel was, for the most part, a fair bit of self promotion but then again, what they were self-promoting was fairly remarkable.
It seems that due to the failure of a business, the investment firm of Goldman Sachs came into possession of 700,000+ acres of land in Tierra del Fuego. At the time, rather than simply sell it, Goldman Sachs donated the land to set up a private land trust and in addition, set up an endowment to manage the land.
It's a fairly amazing example of a company taking the long view rather than seeking the short term profit. And they are rightly proud of themselves.
The film is striking but didn't seem much different from most of the fare of the Discovery Channel. There were two moments which stood out: one, a shot of thousands of parrots wheeling through the air along the cliffs on Patagonia which left me bewildered as to how anyone could enjoy seeing these creatures sitting in a cage in their kitchen. The other one unfortunately completely escapes me right now but I'll let you know if it comes to me.
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