ML - Vegas Magazine

Vegas - 2015 - Issue 2 - Late Spring

Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.

Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/486631

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 55 of 113

photography by jeff gale; opposite page: courtesy of green our planet The AccidenTAl AgronomisTs Ciara Byrne and m maCquarrie are planting the seeds of conservation by funding dozens of clark county school gardens through green our planet. by amy westervelt At the Las Vegas schools that Kim MacQuarrie attended while growing up in the city, agriculture wasn't exactly part of the curriculum. He and his part- ner, Ciara Byrne, originally from Dublin, Ireland, have spent the last two years trying to change that, although neither set out to be an evangelist for school gardens. MacQuarrie and Byrne had successful careers shooting documentary films, often about the natural world—he as director (with four Emmys to his credit) and she as producer—but their shared passion for conservation fre- quently had them talking about how they could effect environmental change more directly. "We've always sort of known that film could help with conser- vation in general, with raising awareness and inspiring people," Byrne says, "but we wanted to find a way to empower people to do something, too." In 2010, she picked up a book that MacQuarrie had been recommend- ing for years, The Sixth Extinction, by the eminent paleoanthropologist Dr. R ichard Leakey. "Ciara read it and said, 'Wow, we've got to contact this guy,'" MacQuarrie recalls. "She found his e-mail, sent him a note, and within 24 hours we had talked to him and decided to go to Kenya to meet him." Leakey is also an ardent conservationist. As an official with the Kenyan government in 1989, he cracked down on the illegal ivory trade by creating armed antipoaching units in the country's national parks, ending the killing of elephants there. He also cofounded WildlifeDirect, an organization that works with wildlife-focused nonprofits across Africa to protect the continent's species. During one of his conversations with MacQuarrie and Byrne, Leakey expressed his frustration at how difficult it was to raise the $25,000 to $30,000 a year that most of the nonprofits needed to continue doing their work. "That was something we'd been thinking about, too," says Byrne. "How do you empower people to give fairly small amounts of money that make a big difference?" After the pair returned from Kenya, MacQuarrie set off on a trek through the Andes (documented in his forthcoming book Adventures in the Andes: On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries), while Byrne stayed in Las Vegas, where she spent time with various people involved in the Downtown Project. "I was so inspired by how many projects Kickstarter had helped to get off the ground," she says. "So when I went to meet K im in Argentina, I said, 'Why don't we do a sort of green Kickstarter?'" The two knew nothing about creating websites, but they knew people who did, including their friend Jeff Newburn, a software engineer at Zappos. He offered to build them a site, and by March 2013, MacQuarrie and Byrne had Raising eco-awareness through their films wasn't enough for Kim MacQuarrie and Ciara Byrne; they needed to take action at the grass roots. 52  vegasmagazine.com PEOPLE Spirit of Generosity

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of ML - Vegas Magazine - Vegas - 2015 - Issue 2 - Late Spring