The Edge of the Wild is an hour-long documentary about a contentious land-use battle in the small town of Brisbane, California on San Bruno Mountain just south of San Francisco. San Bruno Mountain is the last remaining native wilderness surrounding San Francisco, and its grassy hills are home to a small, endangered butterfly called the Mission Blue. However, the mountain is also some of the most valuable real estate in the country. For decades, Brisbane has been at the center of a battle between private landowners wanting to build on their land, environmentalists wishing to stop them to protect the butterfly, and local and national officials torn between the two. This battle came to a head in 1982 when real estate developers were able to amend the U.S. Endangered Species Act to allow them to bulldoze the butterfly’s habitat. In exchange, they were required to try to help the butterfly elsewhere. This plan was hailed as a historic compromise by the U.S. Government, and has now been emulated across the country, affecting tens of millions of acres of endangered species’ habitats nationwide.

30 years later, houses have replaced much of the butterfly’s habitat on San Bruno Mountain and Michele Salmon, a life-long resident of Brisbane, has decided she is fed up with this destruction. When a new real estate development is planned, she joins with her neighbors to challenge the U.S. Government’s decision to allow a multinational corporation to build. Their struggle plays out in front of Brisbane’s city council, where local leaders are forced to choose between acting on behalf of their constituents’ wishes, defying a large corporation threatening to sue them, and towing the U.S. Government’s party line. A lesson in the fragility of our environmental laws, the struggles of local democracy, and the power of ordinary citizens to steward biodiversity, the film is a compelling look at the tensions between private property rights and biodiversity that exists today.

Director/Producer/Editor Gail Mallimson has been working in documentary film as a producer and editor for over 15 years. When she first moved to San Francisco from New York in 1996, she visited San Bruno Mountain and was smitten by its beauty and amazed that such a place could exist just moments from a major city. When she learned of the mountain’s political past, she was determined to get the word out about how this beautiful mountain’s biodiversity had been compromised, and how that compromise had affected endangered species across the country. As she filmed and researched the topic, Gail became more aware of its wider relevance and importance. Scientists estimate that 40% of the earth’s species have died out in the last 25 years. These numbers reflect an altering of the very fabric of life on our planet, a startling fact that The Edge of the Wild brings home for viewers in a real way.  

Gail met Michele Salmon while researching the film. Michele’s story was striking, as her family had lived on San Bruno Mountain for generations. Her dedication to preserving the natural environment she grew up in moved Gail, and the two agreed to work together. While The Edge of the Wild is Gail’s creation, the story is told through Michele’s eyes, and is a touching tribute to a lost era of pristine nature as well as a story about local democracy and nature preservation.