Hi all,
I'm sure many of you have hear your fair share about this broadcast, but
for those who haven't — this documentary, produced by the Cornell Lab's
Multimedia team, is one you won't want to miss! *8pm tonight, on
PBS/Nature.* You can check out a trailer below...
To most people, the sagebrush landscape iconic of the Old West is empty
flyover country, a place to simply endure on your way to somewhere else.
But the reality is quite different: hundreds of species of birds and
mammals evolved with this ecosystem over millennia and have come to depend
on it — and meanwhile, our thirst for space and energy has shrunk the
sagebrush sea by half, and fragmented what remains. The film follows
Greater Sage-Grouse through a year on the steppe, and gives intimate
glimpses into the parallel lives of their wild neighbors.
But this film is not just about sitting back and seeing pretty scenes and
beautiful birds, or harping on about another population decline. It's a key
part of a national dialogue about threatened and endangered species that's
coming to a head this year. Greater Sage-Grouse numbers have dwindled along
with their habitat (from perhaps 16 million pre-settlement to a few hundred
thousand today), and they're due for a listing decision under the
Endangered Species Act in September. But because this sensitive bird's home
range covers so much lucrative land, it's not clear how that decision would
ultimately affect the species' conservation, let alone the fate of the ESA
itself.
While many people understand our energy demands, and are familiar with the
conversion of sage lands for agriculture or rangeland, very few actually
understand what could be lost here. The Sagebrush Sea
http://allaboutbirds.org/sagebrushsea aims to change that. Tuning in
tonight is a first step towards understanding one of the continent's
greatest conservation debates and a chance to show support for preservation
on a much broader stage than just the sagebrush sea.
View the trailer here: https://youtu.be/Ai_uxZo-giM
Thanks so much for all your support!
Andy Johnson
Multimedia Production Team
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
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