Galapagos, Wild Eden, a motion picture produced, filmed and narrated by Roger Tory Peterson has been digitally restored by the National Film Preservation Board, an arm of the Library of Congress.  At 8:00 PM on Friday June 11, 2010 the film will be shown in the Scharmann Theater on the Jamestown Community College Campus.

The subject is the Galapagos Islands of the 1960's when ecotourism was just a concept and population pressure was at a minimum.  Selected as a critical film in need of preservation because of it's rich documentation of a threatened habitat and because its filmmaker was one of the earliest nature documentarians.

The Roger Tory Peterson Nature Documentary Film Collection makes a valuable contribution to our American culture, one that is nationally, even internationally, significant. The collection includes 487 rolls or approximately 200,000 feet of 16 mm film in addition to scripted or audio-taped narration performed by Dr. Peterson himself. The collection is composed of camera-original reversal footage and, with the exception of one reel, is either Kodachrome or Ektachrome.

The wildlife documentaries created by Peterson (Wild America, Wild Africa Today, Wild Europe, Galapagos, Wild Eden, and Flamingos on Four Continents) constitute a unique and respected collection of wildlife in North America as well as locations in Europe, Africa and South America, one that was accumulated primarily in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the habitats he photographed and filmed have since become extinct due to the encroachment of human population and development. Dr. Peterson was able to capture untouched behavior patterns of many species of wildlife before the ecotourism trade resulted in alterations in behavior.

Peterson’s work achieved national prominence with release of Wild America in 1955. The National Audubon Society and/or the Canadian Broadcasting Company commissioned this and other films for their audiences because Peterson brought the talent of a filmmaker together with his unmatched expertise as a field naturalist.  At that time, no one else but Peterson was making documentaries about birds in a context that was accessible to ordinary people and their everyday lives.  Due to this singular accessibility, Peterson’s art, field guides, photography and filmmaking enabled thousands to know and love nature and to ultimately fight for its protection. This period, from the 1950s through the 1970s, was dubbed the ‘environmental awareness era,’ much attributed to Peterson’s delivery of art, in combination with scientific information, to the mass market where it was eagerly consumed.