9pm Sunday AMERICAN BUFFALO - Docu-series
The American Buffalo, takes viewers on a journey through more than 10,000 years of North American history and across some of the continent’s most iconic landscapes, tracing the animal’s evolution, significance to the Great Plains, near demise, and relationship to the Indigenous People of North America.
The dramatic story of America’s national mammal, which sustained the lives of Native people for untold generations, being driven to the brink of extinction, before an unlikely collection of people rescues it from disappearing forever. Ken Burns recounts the tragic collision of two opposing views of the natural world and the unforgettable characters who pointed the nation in a different direction.
On the one hand, we witness the near-extinction of the species in the late 19th century, as the slaughter of bison across the Great Plains reached staggering proportions. Their numbers plummeted from an estimated 30 to 50 million to just a few hundred, while Native American communities who depended on the animal for their survival saw their own futures threatened. It remains one of the most dramatic examples of our ability to destroy the natural world.
But the other, lesser-known half of the story is about 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.
This story is as dramatic and riveting as the tale of the buffalo’s demise, and equally full of unforgettable characters.
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