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America's Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie

AMERICA'S LOST LANDSCAPE: THE TALLGRASS PRAIRIE tells the rich and complex story of one of the most astonishing alterations of nature in human history.

Prior to Euro-American settlement in the 1820s, one of the major landscape features of North America was 240 million acres of tallgrass prairie. But between 1830 and 1900 -- in the span of a single lifetime -- the prairie was steadily transformed to farmland. This drastic change in the landscape brought about an enormous social change for Native Americans. In an equally short time their cultural imprint was reduced in essence to a handful of place-names appearing on maps.

The extraordinary cinematography of prairie remnants, original score and archival images are all delicately interwoven to create a powerful and moving viewing experience about the natural and cultural history of America.

Amongst those interviewed are writer Dayton Duncan, Wes Jackson of The Land Institute, biologist Laura Jackson, linguist Jerome Kills Small, historian Anton Treuer, landscape historian Lance Foster, writer Richard Manning, and Nina Leopold Bailey and Carol Leopold -- two of Aldo Leopold's children.