The 2024 Banff Centre Mountain Movie and Ebook Competition takes place on the finish of October. There shall be a number of visitor audio system, together with Beth Rodden, 9 days of movies, and extra. For a listing of movies go to right here and for a schedule see right here.
The 2024 Summit of Excellence award goes to adventurers Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison, and browse the Banff Centre’s press launch about it beneath. For a listing of earlier Summit of Excellence award recipients see right here. Watch the trailer for this yr’s movie right here:
2024 Summit of Excellence
Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison have dedicated a long time of their lives to the conservation and documentation of each wildlife and the panorama of the Canadian Rockies. What started as curiosity stemming from a mutual love for the outside, finally matured into motion and in the end training and advocacy. Collectively their work has created not solely consciousness however measurable success, particularly for initiatives just like the reintroduction of bison to their pure habitat all through Western Canada.
In 1998, Karsten walked 3,400km, the size of the Rockies, from Yellowstone Nationwide Park in Wyoming to Watson Lake, Yukon. It was a visit of private development but additionally attracted media consideration to the then newly established Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), a forward-thinking group that believes preserving massive tracts of interconnected land is the important thing to thriving ecosystems. Through the 188 days of mountaineering, Karsten had loads of time to consider how people influence landscapes and he understood that they’ve a big function to play in talking up for the animals that can’t.
Karsten labored as each warden and biologist for Parks Canada and finally because the Govt Director for Y2Y. In all his roles, he has championed the imaginative and prescient of animal motion by way of wildlife corridors and has confronted builders who would threaten these wild areas by main an area group known as Bow Valley Interact. His most up-to-date formidable challenge noticed the profitable return of untamed bison to Banff Nationwide Park, maybe probably the most celebrated occasion within the Park’s current historical past and a testomony to his dedication. His best-selling books have gained a number of worldwide awards and are broadly learn and celebrated to at the present time.
Leanne is an award-winning filmmaker and storyteller whose adventures have impressed audiences worldwide by way of movies like Discovering Farley, Being Caribou, and Shedding Blue in addition to her modern, interactive media challenge Bear 71. Being Caribou is the story of Leanne and Karsten’s journey to comply with the porcupine caribou herd throughout Alaska and the Yukon for greater than 1,500km. Their expedition introduced consideration to the specter of useful resource extraction within the Arctic Nationwide Wildlife Refuge.
Discovering Farley is the exceptional 5,000km cross-Canada journey that Leanne and Karsten undertook with their canine and 2-year-old son Zev. It was a love letter to Farley Mowat, one among Canada’s most celebrated wildlife authors. They might paddle, hop a practice, and sail for five months from Canmore, AB to Cape Breton, NB. Discovering Farley gained each the Folks’s Alternative and Grand Prize on the Banff Mountain Movie & Ebook Competition in 2010. Leanne’s newest movie, Iniskim – Return of the Buffalo celebrates the reintroduction of bison in Banff Nationwide Park and the formidable, Indigenous-led Buffalo Treaty which commits to bringing buffalo again all through North America.
Karsten and Leanne’s nationwide legacy is felt by all who’ve met them, learn their books or watched their movies. Their influence on the conservation of Western Canadian ecosystems is simple and their work has crossed borders, and its influence shall be felt by many generations to return.
