Every episode of what was probably the environmental movement's first television series is now available on the web.
Our Vanishing Wilderness first aired almost 40 years ago. The eight half-hour episodes were broadcast by the PBS precursor, National Educational Television beginning in October of 1970. They are now available on a website created by another NET descendant, the New York public channelThirteen.
The production values of the show are a far cry from the ultra-slow-mo, high-definition extravaganzas epitomized by the BBC's Planet Earth. The series was created by nature writer Mary Louise Grossman and her husband Shelly, a nature photographer. It is low-resolution and grainy. The tone is groovy in that slow, Saganish way but tinged with deep sadness over the loss of American biodiversity.
"Forty years ago, a small crew of filmmakers set out to document some of the more pressing issues involving wildlife in America. They made eight half-hour films around the country – it ended up being the first environmental TV series in the U.S.," the Thirteen website maintains. "Shot in 1969, the issues weren’t new, but hadn't been handled much yet on television – the medium had yet to embrace the environmental movement."
The eight shows are a mini-study in the issues most important to the environmentalists of the day. The Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969, which has been described as "the spark that brought the environmental issue to the nation’s attention," features prominently. Also covered are the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska. Its construction and operation brought a consortium of different environmental groups to the remote reaches of the Arctic.
And there's also some good, old-fashioned nature porn like the fight between an owl and a snake embedded below.
The shows were actually digitized last year, but have not received wide circulation. A tip from web producer Robin Edgerton, who worked on the project at Thirteen, brought the series to our attention.
The strange and discordant music that accompanies the opening sequence was arranged by Barry Kornfeld, who may be the same Barry Kornfeld who played guitar with Bob Dylan and on the Van Morrison track, "The Way Young Lovers Do."
See Also:
- The '70s Photos That Made Us Want to Save Earth
- The Environmentalism of Wall-E
- Op-Ed: Stop Trying to Save the Planet
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter, Tumblr, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
