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 8pm Thursday THE AMERICAN BUFFALO Documentary
The dramatic story of the American Buffalo’s near extinction—and the people who saved it.

 This film is the biography of the continent’s most magnificent species, an improbable, shaggy beast that nonetheless has found itself at the center of many of our nation’s most thrilling, mythic, and sometimes heartbreaking tales.

It is a quintessentially American story, filled with a diverse cast of fascinating characters. But it is also a morality tale encompassing two important and historically significant lessons that resonate today.

On the one hand, the startling swiftness of the near extinction of the species in the late 19th century––as the slaughter on the Great Plains reached unbelievable heights, the number of bison collapsed from 30 to 50 million to a few hundred, and the Native Americans who depended on the animal for existence found their own futures imperiled––represents one of the most dramatic examples of our ability to destroy the natural world.

But the other, lesser-known half of our story––of the people who set out to save the species from extermination, and how they did it––provides compelling proof that we are equally capable of pulling back from the brink of environmental catastrophe, if we set our minds to it. The least-known portion of the American buffalo’s history is what happened after Americans realized that they had almost terminated the animal’s existence.

PBS

Today there are more than 350,000 buffalo in the United States, most of them descendants of 77 animals from five founding herds at the start of the 20th century. This story is as dramatic and riveting as the tale of the buffalo’s demise, and equally full of unforgettable characters.

 
PART 1 – Blood Memory - For untold generations, America’s national mammal sustained the lives of Native people, whose cultures were intertwined with the animal. Newcomers to the continent bring a different view of the natural world, and the buffalo are driven to the brink of extinction.

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