The Sagebrush Sea

The Place in Between,” “The Big Empty,” “Flyover Country” — it goes by many bleak names, but North America’s iconic sagebrush steppe is far more than the forgotten backdrop of a Hollywood western — it is the planet’s only home for a deceptively subtle ecosystem: a vast wilderness spanning 250,000 square miles which, at second glance, is brimming with hardy life. But despite its size, this veritable sea of sagebrush is a fragmented landscape with a tenuous future. As we begin to leave our mark here, wringing profit from the land, the marks of other lives more ancient — the cascading songs of sage thrashers, the otherworldly booming of strutting grouse, or the widely-spaced tracks of a Pronghorn’s sprint — are at risk of fading away.

Produced over three years by a team of biologists and filmmakers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and narrated by wildlife filmmaker Allison Argo, The Sagebrush Sea is a portrait of this ecosystem, as seen through the eyes of an increasingly rare bird and its wild neighbors.