POST'S Wallace Stegner Lecture Series Presents "Living with Wolves" Filmmakers Jim and Jamie Dutcher
April 20, 2009
Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) continues its 16th Annual Wallace Stegner Lecture Series with Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Jim and Jamie Dutcher. Together this husband-and-wife team created the Discovery Channel’s most successful wildlife documentary film, “Wolves at Our Door.” Jim and Jamie will share their wildlife experiences in a multimedia presentation called “Living with Wolves,” illustrating the true nature of these fascinating animals.
The Dutchers’ presentation will be held at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts on April 30 at 8:00 p.m. It will be followed by a question-and-answer session and book- and DVD-signing reception with the filmmakers.
The 16th Annual Wallace Stegner Lecture Series concludes on May 21 with award-winning actor, author and longtime environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr. Star of the hit HGTV reality series “Living with Ed,” Begley will share his thoughts about pursuing a “green” lifestyle and how each one of us can transform the way we live, work and play on Planet Earth.
The “Living with Wolves” program on April 30 addresses the plight of this oft-misunderstood creature, now making headlines. Last month it was announced that gray wolves in the northern Rockies and western Great Lakes region are set to be removed from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, and that hunting of the animals there will once again be allowed.
"Common knowledge regarding wolves continues to be a mixture of fact and fiction,” says Jamie Dutcher. “People understand that they are predators, but many still do not know the other side of wolves.” The Dutchers spent six years living with a pack of wolves, “observing them, listening to them and earning their trust,” says Jim Dutcher. “As a result of this time, we came to know wolves as complex animals that are intelligent, playful, and above all devoted to family.”
For the past 16 years, Ambassador Bill and Mrs. Jean Lane have sponsored POST’s Wallace Stegner Lecture Series. POST is deeply grateful to Bill and Jean for their ongoing dedication and support. Generous support for this year’s series also comes from media sponsor Embarcadero Publishing (Palo Alto Weekly, Mountain View Voice, The Almanac) and from lecture sponsors Noble and Lorraine Hancock, Sand Hill Advisors, and Paul and Antje Newhagen.
POST’s lecture series is named in honor of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and conservationist Wallace Stegner. One hundred years after his birth, the legacy of Stegner’s work still reverberates across the mountains, plains and valleys of the American West. The series is dedicated to exploring the themes of land, nature and conservation that Stegner celebrated in his writings about the West’s people, lands and wilderness.
For more information about the lecture series, please visit POST’s Web site at www.openspacetrust.org/activities/lecture.html. Single tickets for Jim and Jamie Dutcher and Ed Begley, Jr. are $22 each and can be ordered directly through the box office at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts at (650) 903-6000 or www.mvcpa.com.