For 100 years movies and video games show the same Wild West: Emptiness. Endless skies, long landscapes, a few people on horses. 

 

 

 

 

 

THAT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE TO WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE.

As late as 1870:

20 million bison roamed the plains
10 million elk moved through valleys and forests
5 billion passenger pigeons darkened the skies
Countless pronghorn, prairie dogs, wolves, bears, and fish filled every ecosystem

Ask in the Texas panhandle, in King of Prussia, in Little Rock, in Kansas. Around here we got deer, badgers, wild pigs. Elk by the million and birds by billions? Crazy talk.

America’s heartland wasn’t empty — it had abundance beyond modern imagination. But that’s the problem. We can’t believe what we haven’t seen.

 

 

 

 

WE CAN CHANGE THAT. We have the technology to show this truth.

CGI and digital effects can realistically - and inexpensively - recreate these animals. What was technically impossible 20 or even 10 years ago is now completely feasible.

Why does it matter?

If we see a world of rich wildlife, thick with animals,

where bison thunder across horizons for days on end,
where the sky turns dark for hours as flocks of birds pass overhead,
where it seems you can walk on water when fish spawn,

we remember.

YOUR SIGNATURE SHOWS THE A MARKET FOR THE REAL WILD WEST.

Your signature shows there’s a market for films and games that depict the real Wild West — complete with the wildlife that actually lived there. We’re asking studios and game developers to include historically accurate animal populations in their productions.

Sign this petition to tell the entertainment industry: Show us the real Wild West.

… AND NOW A TALE OF 2 MOVIES:

Dances with Wolves was the most successful western, and Heaven's Gate was the least. Dances with Wolves won 7 Oscars and made $424 million. Heaven's Gate destroyed a studio. Dances with Wolves showed thousands of buffalo. Heaven's Gate was hyper-realistic, but showed none.

Dances with Wolves had a hunt with 3,500 buffalo that took 3 weeks to shoot, and pushed production way over budget. Hollywood said it was Kevin Costner's Heaven's Gate. It wasn't. Audiences loved this part best.

Heaven's Gate got a steam engine to pull a train, relocated ancient trees, bought thousands of horses. Audiences knew it wasn't the real wild west.

Real buffalo runs involved 100,000s of animals. Audiences will be awed.

John Jay Audubon reported air rivers of passenger pigeons so thick their droppings fell like snow. Politicians didn't promise a chicken in every pot, because a family with a gun got game.

The Max Planck Institute for Informatics has software anyone can use to easily make authentic 3D motion picture animals.

We’ve let Hollywood show empty landscapes, because that’s all they could do. Don't let them get away with it anymore.

Please sign the petition, so that we can watch what the real wild west really looked like.

FROM "IN NUMBERS, NUMBERLESS"
by biologist Steve Nell, for the Texas Wildlife Association:

“Despite the hardships, our early Texas ancestors described a land of unbridled abundance. The wildlife they encountered were unbelievable in number ... once more numerous than the stars of the sky, but no match for a growing civilization. We can never go back to this abundance, and we cannot blame our forefathers for what they did not know. But we can remember, marvel and perhaps learn some lessons from the past to apply now.”

Please make this a story about how individuals banded together and convinced studios to show the real wild west. In it's in their benefit, and it's in ours.