Good old humanity: that rare species with the capacity to destroy its own natural habitat, and every other known species' habitat, and maybe some unknown species' habitats too, while we're at it. In spite of it all, at least a modicum of willingness to transcend these destructive ways sometimes manifests in ecologically themed documentary films, some of which are collected annually in the San Francisco Green Film Festival. "Just about everything endangered in the world is for sale in China," someone says in festival hot-ticket Racing Extinction, referring of course to forms of life. So that sounds like a pretty depressing situation, but at least a film has been made to expose and rectify it. Meanwhile, in The Edge of the Wild, a group of volunteers convenes to weed the invasive plants which would otherwise crowd out an endangered butterfly's only food source on San Bruno Mountain. "Nature's changing," one of them says, "and we need to interact with it directly, but we have to do it well." (That seems like a good summary of the whole festival's philosophy.) Another of the volunteers admits that she had to shame her friends into joining the cause, but once they did show up, they loved it. Presumably those butterflies are not yet for sale somewhere in China, but if they are, it's good to know that several conscientious humans will be on the case.
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