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$80,000 grant to go to The International Wildlife Film Festival and Media Center

June 6, 2004 /

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Bear Paw Development Corporation is a private non-profit organization created for the purpose of administering programs to help improve regional economic conditions in Hill, Blaine, Liberty, Chouteau and Phillips Counties and the Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy's Indian Reservations.

The International Wildlife Film Festival and Media Center http://www.wildlifefilms.org/ in Missoula has received a grant of almost $80,000 from the Seattle-based Murdock Trust http://www.murdock-trust.org/ , according to Janet Rose, executive director of the festival and media center.

By DARYL GADBOW of the Missoulian

http://missoulian.com/articles/2004/06/06/news/local/news05.txt

The grant will allow the IWFF Media Center to begin preservation of its unique film and video library – EarthVision, which contains hundreds of award-winning films that have been entered in the nonprofit organization’s annual festival over the past 27 years.

"This grant is of major international significance and will help us preserve one of the most valuable natural history and wildlife research libraries in the world," Rose said.

The Murdock Trust is a foundation that supports a variety of nonprofit organizations throughout the United States.

The grant to the IWFF Media Center is earmarked specifically for emerging technology that will allow the center to transfer its entire library of films and videos to a permanent tape format, which will make them easily accessible by the public, according to Rose.

The organization’s EarthVision library is housed at the Roxy Theater, the media center’s year-round headquarters. Most of the library is on VHS tape, a rapidly deteriorating material, which is being phased out by new technology. The new tape format will allow the public to borrow films for home viewing and research. The public also will be able to see the films on the media center’s new handicapped-accessible library viewing stations.

In addition, Rose said, EarthVision’s films are now being used by conservation groups and nations around the world. Requests for tapes on subjects ranging from rare species to remote environments regularly come to IWFF from places like Mongolia, Tanzania and Bhutan, she said.

"We then ship the actual programs to those countries," Rose added, "sometimes with translations. And people are able to view films about their own countries, their own animal species, and their own issues, often for the first time in their lives. With this grant, an invaluable documentation of wildlife and natural history topics spanning more than a quarter century will be preserved for generations to come."