For 100 years movies have been showing what the wild west looked like. Now video games. Generations of Americans, and people around the globe, have a picture in their head: endless sky, wide open landscapes, people on horses. Emptiness.

FACT: THE LAND AND SKY WERE FILLED WITH MILLIONS OF ANIMALS.

20 million buffalo in 1870, 10 million elk, 5 million passenger pigeons. Ask in the Texas panhandle, and they'll say "not here". Not in my part of Kansas. Around here we got deer, badgers, wild pigs. Millions? That's crazy.

It's hard to believe something you've never seen, even on a screen.

WE CAN CHANGE THAT. STUDIOS HAVEN'T THOUGHT ABOUT IT. IF A PETITION SAYS WE WANT TO SEE WHAT THE WEST REALLY LOOKED LIKE THEY WILL.

100, 50, 20 years ago it was impossible to show the animals that really existed. Not anymore.

Software can generate realistic 'virtual' wild animals. It costs less than $10,000.

Studios, show the real wild west, with wild animals, birds, fish, that were really there.

SHOW THEM YOU WANT TO SEE IT! SIGN THE PETITION.

WHEN PEOPLE SEE ALL THE WILDLIFE THAT USED TO BE, THEY'LL BELIEVE.

YOUR SIGNATURE SHOWS THERE'S A MARKET FOR THE REAL WILD WEST.

Media should not perpetrate ignorance, showing images of empty landscapes that were really filled.

When people understand what the land really looked like, it helps them understand their current situation. America's heartland was milk and honey. You could die of disease, but if you had a gun (and bullets) you had food. We know, because so much was hunted into oblivion or extinction.

Studios don't care about endangered species, or biodiversity. But if you do, appeal to what they do care about: the market.

Sign the petition.

… 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 thouands of horses. Audiences knew it wasn't the real wild west. They forgot the animals.

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.